HISTORICAL  PAPERS 


RELATING   TO   THE 


HENRY  WHITFIELD  HOUSE 


GUILFORD,   CONNECTICUT 


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HISTORICAL   PAPERS 


RELATING   TO    THE 


HENRY  WHITFIELD   HOUSE 

GUILFORD,   CONNECTICUT 


Reprinted  by  Vote  of  the  Trustees 


THE   TUTTLB,    MOREHOUSE   &   TAYLOR    KRESS. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Introductory 5 

The    Henry    Whitfield    House    and    the    State    Historical 

Museum - 7 

Guilford  Among  her  Neighbors 27 

The  Colonial  Minister 32 

The  Character  of  Henry  Whitfield 36 

Two  Medical  Worthies  Guilford  Knew  in  Former  Days-  •  •  53 

Trustees SQ 


2012457 


INTRODUCTORY. 

The  following  papers  have  been  printed  before  in  two  different 
pamphlets  and  are  here  reproduced  together  on  account  of  their 
common  historical  character.  A  smaller  pamphlet,  "The  Henry 
\Yhitfield  House,"  of  which  a  second  edition  was  issued  about 
two  years  ago,  covers  part  of  the  same  ground  and  gives  a  few 
additional  details. 

The  first  and  longest  article  is  taken  by  the  kind  permission  of 
the  New  Haven  Colony  Historical  Society  from  the  seventh 
volume  of  the  Society's  "Papers,"  though  somewhat  abbreviated. 
The  other  four  come  from  the  "Proceedings  at  the  Formal 
Opening  of  the  State  Historical  Museum,  1904."  Much  interest- 
ing matter  in  the  last-named  pamphlet  is  omitted,  as  relating 
rather  to  the  "Opening"  than  to  the  story  of  the  House. 

The  manuscripts  followed  in  printing  were  furnished  by  the 
various  writers,  who  are  alone  responsible  for  their  historical 
accuracy.  The  ground  plan  and  perpendicular  section  of  the 
original  fireplace  were  kindly  sent  by  the  architect  who  designed 
the  exhibition-room,  Mr.  Norman  M.  Isham  of  Provi- 
dence. Attention  is  called  to  the  note  following  Mrs.  Cheney's 
paper,  which  contains  additional  information  of  much  interest 
concerning  YVhitfield.  It  may  be  noticed  that  as  the  State  His- 
torical Museum  is  in  the  Henry  Whitfield  House,  the  former 
name  is  sometimes  used  to  designate  the  building. 

It  seems  worth  while  to  add  a  brief  account  of  the  view  show- 
ing approximately  the  "supposed  appearance  of  the  exterior" 
of  the  House  when  the  YVhitfields  lived  in  it,  since  this  view  is 
referred  to  in  the  first  paper  as  possessing  a  kind  of  authority. 
\Ye  are  indebted  for  this  cut  to  Mr.  Charles  H.  Scholey  of  the 
Guilford  Shore  Line  Times.  It  is  based  on  a  drawing  made  by  the 
late  Myron  B.  Benton  of  Amenia,  N.  Y.,  in  1862.  This  draw- 
ing appeared  as  a  steel  engraving  (with  a  short  article  from  Mr. 
Benton's  pen),  in  the  Ladies  Repository  for  June,  1863.  The 
engraving  was  photographed,  and  from  the  photograph  in  1890 
a  picture  was  made  on  a  tile  by  the  late  Miss  Harriet  Day 


6  INTRODUCTORY 

Andrews  of  Hartford.  Her  object  was,  first,  to  show  the  stone 
structure  substantially  as  it  was  in  1862  when  Mr.  Benton  drew 
it.  To  this  end  two  modern  additions  of  wood  (one  a  mere 
shed)  were  omitted,  and  a  door  and  a  window,  concealed  by  the 
smaller  addition,  were  introduced.  The  position  of  these  was 
obtained  from  plans  prepared,  it  would  seem,  about  1859  (a^  least 
three  years  before  Mr.  Benton's  visit),  by  Hon.  Ralph  D.  Smith 
for  Palfrey's  History  of  New  England  and  afterwards  inserted 
in  Mr.  Smith's  History  of  Guilford.  There  can  be  no  reasonable 
doubt  that  the  representation  is  accurate  to  this  point.  But  with 
the  object  of  reproducing  still  more  nearly  the  appearance  of  the 
House  as  it  was  when  Mr.  Whitfield  left  it,  the  window  first  men- 
tioned and  a  smaller  one  were  drawn  with  diamond  panes,  such  as 
persons  living  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  could  remember. 
The  old  windows,  however,  according  to  our  architect,  were  much 
smaller  than  those  remaining  in  Mr.  Smith's  day,  though  possibly 
the  two  seen  close  to  the  eaves  and  since  removed  are  original. 
Furthermore,  the  stucco  on  the  outer  walls,  first  put  there,  prob- 
ably, not  far  from  1820  and  renewed  in  1868,  and  which  it  is 
not  quite  clear  whether  Mr.  Benton  intended  to  show,  is  frankly 
omitted  on  the  tile.  Thus  the  far  more  picturesque  surface  of 
seventeenth  century  colonial  masonry,  built  up  of  "rather  small 
flat  stones,"  principally  quarried,  one  fancies,  by  the  frost,  is 
at  least  indicated.  Mr.  Benton's  own  enjoyment  of  picturesque 
effects  is  shown  in  his  rejection  of  "the  ordinary  point  of  view" 
from  the  street.  His  taste  went  far  to  save  from  oblivion  the 
very  striking  east  chimney  then  destined  soon  to  disappear. 

W.  G.  A. 


THE  HENRY  WHITFIELD   HOUSE  AND  THE 
STATE  HISTORICAL  MUSEUM. 

By  REV.  WILLIAM  G.  ANDREWS,  D.D. 

(Read  before  the  New  Haven  Colony  Historical  Society,  December  19, 
1904,  and  here  abbreviated.) 

Rather  more  than  a  year  ago  a  mass  of  blackened  stonework 
was  brought  to  light  in  Guilford  which  I  suppose  nobody  had 
seen  for  more,  perhaps  much  more,  than  a  hundred  years.  It 
is,  in  the  opinion  of  the  architect  and  archaeologist  who  super- 
intended what  we  may  call  the  excavation,  "the  oldest  fireplace 
in  New  England,"*  and  opens  into  the  north  chimney  of  the 
Henry  Whitfield  house.  In  front  of  it  and  effectually  conceal- 
ing it  were  two  other  fireplaces;  one  had  been  in  existence  for 
a  generation,  and  one,  or  its  ruins,  for  no  one  knows  how  long, 
certainly  since  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Now  how  do  we  know  that  what  we  call  the  Whitfield  house 
is  really  that  which  Henry  Whitfield  lived  in  ?  How  do  we  know 
that  his  house,  whether  this  one  or  another,  was  built  in  1640,  or 
before?  How  do  we  know  that  some  other  settler,  somewhere 
else,  did  not,  as  he  easily  might,  build  a  house,  part  or  even  the 
whole  of  which  still  stands,  years  before  this  can  have  been 
built,  so  that  our  priceless  fireplace  is  perhaps  not  the  oldest  in 
New  England? 

As  to  the  question  of  identity,  that  is  soon  disposed  of.  There 
are,  in  the  first  place,  deeds  and  wills  running  back  from  1900 
to  1659,  when  Whitfield's  son,  Nathaniel,  sold  what  had  been 
his  father's  New  England  residence,  and  alone  proving  the  iden- 
tity of  that  with  the  "old  stone  house"  of  Guilford.  But  we 
have  also  the  testimony  of  Rev.  Thomas  Ruggles,  junior,  a 
native  of  Guilford,  and  an  industrious  questioner  of  children 
and  grandchildren  of  the  settlers,  given  while  the  property  still 

*  This  opinion,  it  will  be  observed,  relates  only  to  the  fireplace  with, 
I  suppose,  the  greater  part  of  the  chimney.  Houses  are  often  older  than 
their  present  chimneys. 


O  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

belonged  to  the  family  which  bought  it  of  the  Whitfields  (1769), 
that  Whitfield's  house  was  then  standing.  And  we  have  the 
testimony  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  given  when 
the  property  had  passed  to  the  owner  whose  descendants  held 
it  until  1900,  that  the  same  house  had  meanwhile  been  "hand- 
somely repaired."*  The  identity  is  beyond  question,  even  if  it 
only  extends  to  the  fireplace  and  part  of  the  chimney. 

But  when,  precisely,  did  Henry  Whitfield  build  the  house, 
or,  at  any  rate,  the  chimney?  It  needs  no  contemporaneous 
documents,  testifying  explicitly  to  the  date  of  erection,  to  prove 
that  the  date  is  earlier  than  1650,  when,  as  such  documents 
prove,  Mr.  Whitfield  left  Guilford  finally.  It  needs  no  contem- 
poraneous papers  to  prove  that  he  built  his  house,  like  other 
settlers,  as  soon  as  possible  after  the  town  was  settled,  and  docu- 
ments amply  prove  that  Guilford  was  settled  in  1639,  and  that 
the  settlers,  with  Henry  Whitfield  at  their  head,  had  begun  to 
occupy  the  lands  in  some  way  "as  planters"  before  September 
twenty-ninth  of  that  year,  when  the  formal  transfer  was  made 
by  the  Indians.  They  had  probably  already  built  some  tempo- 
rary houses  or  cabins  to  shelter  them  during  the  winter,  and 
those  who  could  do  so  must  have  completed  more  permanent 
houses  in  the  course  of  the  next  year.  Mr.  Whitfield,  the  richest 
of  the  planters,  with  a  wife  and  eight  or  nine  children,  had  no 
doubt  substantially  finished  his  stone  house  in  1640,  though  we 
are  assured  that  it  could  not  have  been  finished  in  1639.  But 
since  it  was  intended,  according  to  Mr.  Ruggles,  that  is  accord- 
ing to  the  children  and  grandchildren  of  the  settlers,  to  serve 
as  a  fort,  and  such  a  defense  of  the  settlement  would  be  secured 
as  early  as  it  could  be,  it  is  hard  not  to  believe  that  it  was  begun 
in  1639,  and  so  far  finished  that  it  could  be  used  as  a  place  of 
refuge  in  case  of  attack,  and  could  be  made  a  comfortable  abode 
for  Mr.  Whitfield  and  one  of  his  sons,  or  some  friends,  until 
spring.  And  during  the  recent  changes  already  referred  to  a 
break  was  found  in  the  west  or  front  wall  of  the  cellar  which 
suggested  to  the  architect  that  two  parts  of  that  wall  had  per- 
haps been  built  at  two  different  times.  And  on  the  east 
side  of  the  house  a  vertical  joint,  discovered  where  the  north 

*  Ruggles'    "History  of   Guilford,"    Collections  of  Massachusetts  His- 
torical Society,     ist  series,  vols.  iv  and  x. 


WHITFIELD  HOUSE  AND  HISTORICAL  MUSEUM  9 

wall  of  the  wing  or  ell  met  the  wall  of  the  front  part  near 
the  north  end  of  the  house,  and  signs  of  plaster  on  the  latter 
behind  the  end  of  the  other  wall,  suggested  that  the  ell  was 
built  later  than  the  front  part.  On  these  grounds  the  architect 
thinks  it  "somewhat"  likely  that  the  house  was  at  first  a 
single  room.  It  might  have  been  a  square  structure  with  the 
south  end  filled  in  with  timbers,  while  the  great  north  fire- 
place made  it  habitable.  We  cannot  affirm  positively  that  this 
fireplace  and  the  adjoining  walls  date  from  1639,  but  several 
facts  point  that  way  and  create  a  strong  probability  that  that 
is  the  true  date.  That  the  house,  as  a  whole,  was  finished  in 
1640  is  fairly  well  proved. 

But  is  the  Whitfield  house  the  oldest  in  New  England,  or 
as  has  often  been  affirmed,  in  the  United  States?  It  seems 
impossible  to  be  sure  that  it  is,  unless  one  can  know  the  age  of 
all  the  oldest  houses  in  the  country  (leaving  out  of  considera- 
tion the  much  earlier  Spanish  settlements),  and  that,  I  fear, 
we  can  never  know.  A  very  partial  inquiry  gives,  however, 
a  result  interesting  as  far  as  it  goes.  In  Virginia  no  dwelling 
house  now  standing  is  known  to  have  been  built  before  1654. 
In  Rhode  Island  one  house  is  variously  assigned  to  1640  and 
1639,  making  it  as  old  as  ours.  But  good  authorities  think 
this  assignment  less  than  probable;  that  house  is  "possibly" 
as  old.  In  Massachusetts  there  are,  or  were  not  long  ago, 
about  a  dozen  houses  for  which  a  date  earlier  than  1640  is 
claimed,  and  there  is  an  antecedent  probability  that  such  claims 
can  rightfully  be  made  in  territory  settled  nearly  twenty  years 
before  Guilford.  And  yet  it  does  not  appear  that  any  one  of 
these  dates  has  been  so  conclusively  established  as  to  be  accepted 
by  local  historical  students  as  a  body.  That  is,  it  seems  that 
the  precise  dates  depend  on  tradition  only.  At  least  that  is 
the  only  inference  which  I  can  draw  from  what  I  have  learned 
about  the  matter.  It  remains  entirely  possible,  if  not  probable, 
that  Massachusetts  does  now  contain  dwellings  older  than  the 
Whitfield  house;*  it  is  possible  that  there  are  such  in  Virginia, 
settled  in  1607.  But  it  seems  fair  to  say  that  in  the  three  States 
mentioned  there  are  none  for  which  a  date  as  early  has  been  so 
nearly  proved.  I  believe  that  as  much  could  have  been  said  if 

*  Our  architect  thinks  that  the  Roger  Williams  House  in  Salem  is  older. 


10  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

the  inquiry  had  been  extended  to  other  States  of  English  origin 
as  long  settled  as  Connecticut. 

Before  dealing  with  the  question  as  to  the  probable  appear- 
ance of  the  house  in  Whitfield's  time,  it  is  better  to  say  some- 
thing of  the  changes  known  or  believed  to  have  been  made  during 
the  long  interval,  now  approaching  two  centuries  and  three- 
quarters,  with  a  brief  mention  of  the  owners  who  made  them. 
The  story  of  the  successive  owners  is  an  interesting  one  and 
enriches  the  house  itself  with  some  memorable  associations,  but 
I  can  give  little  more  than  names  and  dates. 

Mr.  Whitfield  died  in  England,  in  1657,  leaving  his  Guilford 
property  to  his  wife,  Dorothy  Sheaffe.  When  their  son, 
Nathaniel,  sold  it  for  his  mother  two  years  later  (1659),  the 
purchaser  was  Major  Robert  Thompson,  a  Puritan  merchant 
of  London,  who  had  become  also  a  landowner,  and  who  is  to-day 
represented  by  his  descendant,  Sir  Francis  Astley-Corbett, 
owner  of  Major  Thompson's  country  house,  Elsham  Hall,  in 
Lincolnshire.  Four  descendants  in  the  male  line,  all  living  in 
England,  held  the  property  until  1772,  when  another  Robert 
Thompson  sold  it  to  Wyllys  Eliot  of  Guilford,  a  fictitious  law- 
suit in  New  Haven  being  necessary  to  break  the  entail.  The 
house  itself  belonged  to  Mr.  Eliot  (of  the  family  of  the  famous 
apostle  to  the  Indians,  still  represented  in  Guilford  and  else- 
where) less  than  a  fortnight,  and  was  sold  in  November,  1772, 
to  Joseph  Pynchon,  the  solitary  owner,  after  Whitfield,  who 
ever  lived  in  it;  it  is,  therefore,  a  "Pynchon  House"  by  a 
much  better  title  than  the  "House  of  the  Seven  Gables."  In 
1776,  Mr.  Pynchon  sold  it  to  Jasper  Griffing  of  Guilford,  with 
whose  descendants  it  remained  until  the  sale  to  the  State  of 
Connecticut  in  1900.  The  last  individual  owner,  Mrs.  Sarah 
Brown  Cone  of  Stockbridge,  descends  from  a  first  cousin  of 
Mrs.  Whitfield's,  Joanna  Sheaffe,  the  wife  of  William  Chitten- 
den,  and  therefore  shares  the  blood  of  the  first  mistress  and 
second  owner.* 

In  indicating  the  changes  which  have  made  the  house 
what  it  is,  I  follow  a  guide  to  whom  I  have  already  referred, 
the  architect  who  planned  and  carefully  watched  the  latest 
changes,  whom  I  may  now  introduce  as  Mr.  Norman  M.  Isham 

*  Mrs.  Cone  died  Nov.  9,  1909. 


WHITFIELD  HOUSE  AND  HISTORICAL  MUSEUM  II 

of  Providence,  and  to  whom  my  obligations  are  greater  than  I 
can  easily  tell  you.  In  a  book  on  "Early  Connecticut  Houses," 
of  which  he  was  one  of  the  authors,  and  which  some  of  you 
probably  know,  he  assigns  by  conjecture  to  one  of  the  Thomp- 
sons, near  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  division 
by  a  floor  and  partitions  of  a  long,  high  hall,  of  which  tradition 
makes  the  whole  front  part  of  the  house  to  have  consisted 
originally,  and  which  Mr.  Isham  is  strongly  inclined  to  believe 
in.  It  is  likely  to  have  been  divided  very  early  by  a  floor,  and 
just  such  a  change  had  been  made  in  a  multitude  of  such  halls 
in  England  in  the  sixteenth  century.  This  change  may  have 
been  Major  Thompson's  own  contribution  to  the  convenience 
and  comfort  of  his  American  tenants.  Another  Thompson  very 
likely  removed  in  the  eighteenth  century  a  chimney  which  there 
is  good  reason  to  believe  stood  in  the  beginning  at  the  south 
end  of  the  hall  but  which  did  not  exist  forty  years  ago.  This 
removal  was  made,  doubtless,  to  render  it  possible  to  put  win- 
dows into  the  south  upper  room  and  perhaps  the  attic,  but  the 
south  wall  was  weakened  by  doing  it.  Almost  certainly  after 
Jasper  Griffing  became  owner  repairs  were  made  which  may 
have  included  the  building  of  a  second  fireplace  at  the  north  end, 
in  front  of  the  old  one.  Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  the 
outer  wall  was  plastered.  Finally,  in  1868,  during  the  owner- 
ship of  Mrs.  Cone's  mother,  Mrs.  Chittenden,  when  the  house 
had  become  uninhabitable,  and  at  least  the  south  wall  was 
insecure,  it  was  largely  rebuilt.  This  was  done  to  save  it,  and 
those  most  concerned  earnestly  desired  to  preserve  everything 
that  was  capable  of  preservation.  The  extent  of  the  changes, 
however,  has  been  variously  stated  and  there  has  long  been 
a  strong  desire  to  know  positively  how  much  of  the  old  work 
was  left,  a  desire  which  it  was  hoped  that  the  late  changes  would 
to  some  extent  gratify.  The  latest  fireplace  in  the  north  chim- 
ney was  now  introduced  and  the  south  chimney  was  restored. 
A  sad  loss,  apparently  inevitable,  was  that  of  the  old  roof,  the 
curious  construction  of  which,  as  far  as  can  be  inferred,  might 
have  been  intended  to  provide  gables  in  front,  containing  win- 
dows for  the  original  garret,  otherwise  quite  in  darkness. 

The  observations  made  by  Mr.  Isham,  in  1903,  was  limited 
by  the  object  then  in  view.     This  was  not  to  solve  problems, 


12  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

but  to  provide  a  convenient  room  for  the  principal  collections  of 
the  Museum,  of  course  without  injury  to  what  was  most  precious 
of  them  all,  the  remnants  of  the  original  house.  Less  was 
learned  than  had  been  hoped,  therefore,  about  the  building  as  it 
was  at  first  and  about  the  portion  which  remained  after  1868. 

The  most  interesting  results  concerned  the  fireplace  and 
chimney,  which,  if  I  understand  my  guide,  were  probably 
unique  in  New  England  in  virtue  of  two  or  three  features 
which  have  survived  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  One 
of  them  is  shown  in  plans  of  Shakespeare's  birthplace,  and 
consists  of  two  pilaster-like  buttresses,  one  on  either  side  of  the 
wide  opening  of  the  fireplace,  and  each  extending  backwards 
two  feet  from  the  opening  and  projecting  into  it,  one  a  little 
less,  the  other  a  little  more,  than  one  foot.  They  must  have 
borne  part  of  the  weight  of  the  huge  timber  lintel  or  mantel- 
tree  (long  since  removed  and  then  bearing  marks  of  fire)  on 
which  the  masonry  forming  the  front  of  the  chimney  rested. 
And  a  mass  of  new  masonry,  now  covered  by  panelling  and 
approximately  a  rude  triangle,  indicated  the  space  from  which 
the  old  work  had  fallen.  Another  peculiar  feature,  such  as  is 
seen  in  photographs  of  old  English  fireplaces,  is  a  depression 
in  the  back  of  the  chimney  four  and  a  half  feet  wide  and  twelve 
inches  deep,  beginning  about  thirty  inches  above  the  present 
floor,  and  disappearing  nine  or  ten  feet  higher,  through  the 
gradual  contraction  of  the  flue  to  the  width  of  the  depression. 
Finally,  it  was  found  that  the  chimney  contained  two  flues, 
the  partition  beginning  seven  or  eight  feet  above  the  hearth. 
These  were  inserted,  Mr.  Isham  believes,  to  carry  off  the  smoke 
from  two  small  fires  to  be  built,  one  or  both,  in  mild  weather  at 
opposite  ends  of  the  fireplace,  where  was  found,  beneath  each 
flue,  an  iron  bar  for  supporting  pots  and  kettles.  In  cold  weather 
a  single  fire,  as  large  as  might  be  needed,  would  be  served  as 
well  by  two  flues  as  by  one.  Once  more  there  is  European 
precedent  for  at  least  part  of  this  arrangement,  since  in  the 
middle  ages  there  were  sometimes  two  fireplaces  in  the  same 
chimney  and  in  the  same  room. 

This  fireplace  is  farther  noticeable  for  the  disproportion 
between  its  length,  ten  feet  and  four  inches,  and  its  height,  not 
quite  four  feet;  the  former  making  it  easier  to  have  two  small 


WII1TFIELD  HOUSE  AND  HISTORICAL  MUSEUM  13 

fires,  the  latter  easier  to  supply  a  sufficient  draft  for  them,  or 
for  one  large  one,  and  so  lessening  the  danger  of  a  smoky  chim- 
ney. The  eye  is  at  once  struck  by  another  peculiarity,  of 
modern  origin,  the  raising  of  the  present  floor  about  eight  inches 
above  the  ancient  hearth.  This  took  place,  for  the  most  part, 
in  1868,  when  a  new  floor  had  to  be  laid  and  the  whole  building 
was  made  higher.  There  would  have  seemed  no  reason  for 
keeping  the  floor  on  a  level  with  a  fireplace  which  had  long  been 
not  only  out  of  use  but  out  of  sight.  In  making  the  final 
changes,  now  finished,  the  construction  of  another  and  lower 
floor  would  have  been  too  costly  and  the  surface  was  simply 
rendered  even  by  being  covered  with  oak,  and  at  the  north  end 
was  two  inches  higher  than  before.  The  difference  in  height 
at  least  emphasized  the  characteristics  of  the  ancient  fireplace 
and  it  was  more  important  to  show  that  as  nearly  as  possi- 
ble in  its  original  condition  than  to  bring  modern  work  into 
conformity  with  it.* 

It  is  proper  to  add  that  the  ruins  of  a  brick  oven  were  found 
on  the  left,  or  east  side  of  the  fireplace,  but  this  is  supposed 
to  have  been  introduced  by  Jasper  Griffing  towards  the  close 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  Of  greater  consequence  are  marks 
which  seem  to  indicate  a  fireplace  on  the  level  of  the  second 
floor.  If  this  is  original  it  shows  that  this  floor  was  in  existence 
from  the  beginning  and  that  the  tradition  of  a  high  hall  must 
be  given  up.  But  Mr.  Isham  does  not  believe  the  upper  fire- 
place to  have  been  built  at  that  early  period,  but  to  have  been 
constructed  when  the  second  floor  was  built. 

Mr.  Isham  is  certain  that  a  section  of  from  four  to  eight  feet 
at  the  top  of  the  chimney  consists  of  modern  work.  We  are  told 
that  the  walls  of  the  house,  originally  fifteen  feet  high,  were 
raised  two  and  a  half  feet  in  1868,  and  the  chimney  would 
naturally  have  been  raised  as  much  as  the  walls,  or  more.  A 
comparison  of  pictures  taken  before  and  after  that  date  seems 
to  show  that  the  chimney  rises  higher  above  the  roof  than  was 
once  the  case.  It  is,  moreover,  reasonable  to  assume  that  the 
old  top  needed  repairs  and  so  we  can  explain  the  new  work  with- 
out assuming  that  much  of  the  old  work  has  disappeared.  There 

*  A  plan  of  the  fireplace,  with  a  vertical  section,  will  be  found  at  the 
close  of  this  paper. 


14  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

is,  in  fact,  no  doubt  that  not  only  the  fireplace  but  the  larger  part 
of  the  chimney  are  what  they  were  when  first  built.  And  what 
they  then  were  in  general  character  has  long  been  visible  from 
without  at  a  point  where  the  stucco  has  fallen  from  the  chimney, 
showing  the  old  masonry.  This  consists,  in  Mr.  Isham's  words, 
"of  rather  small  flat  stones,  with  large  mortar  joints,"  and 
the  old  masonry  inside  is  of  the  same  description,  as  far  as  it 
has  been  uncovered.  In  fact  it  was  not  the  nature  but  the 
extent  of  what  remains  of  the  original  structure  which  most 
of  us  have  particularly  desired  to  ascertain.  This  could  only 
be  done  by  the  removal  of  the  plaster,  and  it  was  impossible 
to  remove  enough  to  settle  the  question  without  diverting  money 
given  for  the  construction  of  an  exhibition  room  from  its  desig- 
nated purpose.  The  north  wall  was  exposed  by  the  side  of  and 
above  the  fireplace  to  a  point  somewhat  higher  than  the  second 
floor.  Except  for  the  triangular  space  already  mentioned  as 
directly  over  the  fireplace,  what  was  laid  bare  was  old,  as  was 
expected.  A  large  part  of  this  wall  adjoining  the  chimney 
may  fairly  be  supposed  to  be  original,  with  allowance  made,  of 
course,  for  what  may  have  been  added  at  the  top  when  the  walls 
were  heightened.  The  east  or  rear  wall  extends  but  a  few  feet, 
ending  with  the  wing  or  ell,  or  rather  with  what  was  a  small 
room  in  the  reentrant  angle,  which  might  have  been  a  stairwell 
and  which  occupied  the  place  of  the  present  stairs.  The  little 
work  that  was  uncovered  in  the  east  wall  seemed  old,  and  rela- 
tively old  work  was  found  near  the  angle  in  the  wall  of  the  wing. 
The  west  wall,  or  that  facing  the  street,  was  uncovered  only  at 
the  front  door,  and  on  the  line  of  the  second  floor  when  that  was 
removed.  In  neither  place  does  old  masonry  seem  to  have  been 
found.  It  may,  nevertheless,  exist  below  the  level  of  the  second 
floor.  Such  testimony  as  has  been  obtained  about  the  changes 
made  in  1868  is  conflicting,  but  it  is  on  the  whole  to  the  effect 
that  as  much  as  half  of  the  ancient  wall  was  not  disturbed,  the 
larger  part  of  that  being  to  the  north  of  the  door.  But  if  the 
architect  saw  no  old  work  above  the  level  of  the  second  floor, 
and  some  new  work  below  it,  we  seem  forced  to  the  conclusion 
that  less  of  the  west  wall  is  original  than  had  been  supposed, 
though  some  of  it  may  be  presumed  to  be  so.  Of  the  south 
wall,  Mr.  Isham  writes:  "Everything  seemed  to  show  that  the 


WHITFIELD  HOUSE  AND  HISTORICAL  MUSEUM  15 

wall  had  been  rebuilt;"  he  remembers  "no  old  work."  And 
it  is  the  general,  though  not  the  universal,  opinion  of  those  who 
remember  the  changes  of  1868  that  the  south  wall  is  substan- 
tially new.  In  the  foundation  some  new  work  was  found  in  the 
form  of  a  lining,  but  the  old  work  remained  behind  it  and  there 
seems  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  original  foundation  of  at 
least  the  main  building  is  virtually  intact. 

But  could  the  modern  part  of  the  house  be  made  to  disappear 
we  should  certainly  see  a  roofless  ruin,  with  the  great  north 
chimney,  like  a  low  crumbling  tower,  standing  amongst  and 
partly  supporting  ragged  fragments  of  wall,  but  a  ruin  in  which 
we  could  trace  three  sides  of  the  square  room  in  which  we  have 
fancied  Whitfield  to  have  faced  his  first  New  England  winter 
in  the  late  autumn  of  1639.  But  what  should  we  see  if  chimney 
and  walls  stood  as  Whitfield  left  them  in  1650?  There  are 
several  pictures  of  the  building  made  before  the  general  recon- 
struction of  1868,  and  the  Museum  contains  a  model  prepared 
in  1855.  Changes  had  been  made  in  the  course  of  the  eighteenth 
century  but  we  do  not  know  that  they  affected  the  external 
appearance  of  the  house  except  by  the  removal  of  the  south 
chimney,  the  introduction  of  at  least  one  window  in  front  and 
the  enlargement  of  others.  And  there  is  a  view  based  on  a 
drawing  made  in  1862,  and  agreeing  with  the  model  just  men- 
tioned, which  is  not  only  far  more  picturesque  than  the  rest, 
but  is  so  largely  in  virtue  of  the  correspondence  which  appears 
between  the  wing  on  the  east  and  the  venerable  north  end,  so 
that  the  former  looks  not  less  venerable.  Of  the  north  end, 
as  shown  in  the  picture  in  question,  it  is  enough  to  say  that  it 
looks,  as  it  should,  lower  than  at  present  and  in  consequence 
a  little  broader,  which  it  was  not.  In  the  angle  between  the 
main  building  and  the  ell  is  the  small  stone  structure  already 
referred  to  as  perhaps  a  stairwell,  and  which  strengthens  the 
picturesque  effect  of  angles  and  broken  lines  characteristic  of 
this  view.  The  effect  is  completed  by  another  projecting  chim- 
ney at  the  east  end  or  rear  of  the  ell  of  the  same  general  pattern 
as  the  principal  one  and  strongly  suggesting  an  essentially  con- 
temporaneous origin.  It  is  naturally  smaller  than  the  other, 
and  has  only  one  sloping  offset  instead  of  three,  but  makes  up 
for  this  sobriety  of  outline  by  thrusting  itself  into  and  finally 


1 6  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

emerging  from  an  aggressively  overhanging  wooden  gable  which 
contained  two  secret  closets,  one  on  each  side  of  the  chimney,  and 
behind  the  wall.  All  this  is  lost  in  the  modern  wing,  which 
has  no  irregularities  of  form,  is  longer  than  its  predecessor  by 
the  width  of  one  room,  and  is  of  the  height  of  the  main  building.* 
As  to  the  arrangement  of  the  interior  in  Whitfield's  time,  we 
have  even  less  material  for  positive  assertion,  and  can  assert 
positively  only  this,  that  after  1868,  at  all  events,  there  remained 
no  recognizable  traces  of  the  original  arrangement.  Hence,  in 
such  changes  as  might  be  made,  there  was  no  danger  of  destroy- 
ing anything  ancient  existing  within  the  walls.  There  is  still 
preserved  an  oak  stair-rail  made  of  the  old  timber,  but  this 
throws  no  light  on  the  primitive  interior.  I  have,  however, 
already  referred  to  a  tradition  that  the  front  part  of  the  house 
consisted  of  a  single  room  as  high  as  the  side  walls,  if  not  as 
high  as  the  roof.  This  apartment  was  used,  it  is  said,  for 
public  worship  and,  we  may  suppose,  for  other  public  assem- 
blies, until  the  first  meeting-house  was  built,  presumably  three 
or  four  years  after  the  settlement.  It  was  made  more  suitable 
for  family  use  by  folding  partitions  which  could  be  let  down 
or  drawn  up  as  occasion  required.  This  tradition  is  traceable 
to  a  former  owner  of  the  house,  Mrs.  Nathaniel  Griffing,  who 
died  in  1865,  when  she  lacked  but  two  days  of  completing  her 
ninety-eighth  year,  and  who  was,  of  course,  born  in  1767.  Her 
husband  had  inherited  the  Whitfield  property  in  1800,  and  her 
interest  in  it  must  have  been  strong  much  earlier,  while  the 
tradition  must  have  come  down  from  some  period  still  nearer 
the  days  of  Whitfield.  The  circumstantial  character  of  this 
account  renders  it  more  credible.  If  it  be  asked  how  the  house, 
even  with  movable  partitions  and  even  when  enlarged  by  the 
erection  of  the  ell,  containing  very  likely  an  upper  room,  could 
have  been  a  comfortable  abode  for  Mr.  Whitfield's  large  family, 
it  can  be  replied  that  few  persons  would  have  asked  the  question 
then.  A  generation  or  two  earlier,  and  to  some  extent  in  Whit- 
field's own  generation,  a  country  squire  in  England  might  have 
had  as  few  rooms  and  as  small  a  house  as  the  first  minister  of 
Guilford.  At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  house  of 

*  The  view  described  will  be  found  after  Dr.  Walker's  paper  on    "The 
Colonial  Minister." 


•   WHITFIELD  HOUSE  AND  HISTORICAL  MUSEUM  17 

an  important  county  family  had  but  one  upper  room,  where 
the  squire  slept  in  a  curtained  bed  while  his  daughters  and  the 
maids  slept  without  curtains  around  him,  and  the  sons  and  serv- 
ing-men in  the  hall  below,  in  which,  moreover,  the  entire  house- 
hold sat  when  indoors  during  the  day.  In  this  case,  as  in  multi- 
tudes of  others,  the  original  high  hall  had  evidently  been  divided 
by  a  floor,  but  this  was  almost  always  done  after,  perhaps  long 
after  the  house  was  built,  and  was  done,  of  course,  at  an  addi- 
tional outlay,  by  way  of  improvement,  just  as  a  modern  house 
is  often  made  more  spacious  and  commodious  as  the  owner's 
wealth  increases.  Hence,  Mr.  Whitfield's  high  hall,  if  he  had 
one,  might  have  been  the  result  of  a  wish  to  avoid  extravagance 
rather  than  of  a  wish  to  give  greater  dignity  to  his  dwelling. 
His  own  wealth  need  not  have  prevented  this,  for  if,  as  is 
virtually  certain,  he  was  very  influential  in  framing  the  early 
"orders"  of  the  town,  then  we  may  doubtless  see  his  hand  in 
the  precaution  (not  taken  in  New  Haven)  against  the  acquisi- 
tion by  the  richer  men  of  large  bodies  of  land.  No  one  might, 
without  the  permission  of  the  majority  of  the  freemen,  "put 
in  his  estate  above  five  hundred  pounds  to  require  accomoda- 
tions  proportionable  in  any  divisions  of  land,"  while  "the  poorest 
planter,"  perhaps  worth  ten  pounds  or  less,  could  have  land 
"proportionable"  to  an  estate  of  fifty  pounds.  The  brotherly, 
if  not  .democratic,  spirit  thus  shown  would  probably  incline 
Whitfield  to  seek  simplicity  and  avoid  ostentation  in  his  own 
domestic  arrangements.  Nevertheless  the  question  as  to  the 
height  of  the  room  remains  an  open  one.  Mr.  Isham,  looking 
on  the  tradition  with  favor,  is  yet  constrained  to  say,  "As  regards 
the  great  questions  of  the  house,  the  alterations  have  no  real 
evidence  to  offer." 

In  such  circumstances  a  restoration  in  the  proper  sense  was 
impracticable  because  no  one  could  be  said  to  know  what  to 
restore.  But  it  was  both  practicable  and  necessary  to  prepare 
the  interior  for  the  uses  of  the  Historical  Museum  which  the 
trustees  were  required  by  the  legislature  of  Connecticut  to 
establish  in  the  Whitfield  house.  This  involved  the  opening  of 
an  exhibition  room  as  large,  and  likewise  as  attractive,  as  the 
conditions  permitted.  To  destroy  anything  ancient  in  construct- 
ing a  room  intended  for  the  reception  and  preservation  of  ancient 


1 8  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

things  would  have  been  as  absurd  as  it  would  have  been  mon- 
strous, but  the  modern  partitions  and  floor  might  be  destroyed 
without  scruple.  The  tradition  haunting  the  house,  its  oldest 
tenant,  summoned  us  to  do  just  this  and  the  house  refused 
to  supply  incredulous  science  with  any  exorcism  for  banishing 
or  silencing  its  tenant.  The  testimony  of  hundreds  of  colonial 
houses  to  the  colonial  habit  of  building  "'low  between  joists"  was 
weighty,  but  could  scarcely  outweigh  the  belief  of  several  genera- 
tions, derived,  it  is  most  likely,  from  the  knowledge  of  an  earlier 
generation,  that  this  particular  house  was  otherwise  built,  added 
to  the  fact  that  the  colonist  who  built  it  might  have  seen  lofty 
halls  by  the  score  in  ancient  English  dwellings,  and  the  fact 
that  the  fireplaces  and  chimney  which  this  colonist  built  bear  a 
degree  of  testimony  to  his  apparent  preference  for  antiquated 
forms.  A  more  practical,  if  not  more  weighty,  objection  to  tear- 
ing away  the  upper  floor  was  the  inconvenience,  to  say  no  more, 
of  sacrificing  half  the  floor  space  available  at  the  time.  But  more 
space  would  be  available  later,  and  the  dignity  and  attractiveness 
which  might  be  secured  in  a  rather  lofty  apartment  carried  the 
day  in  favor  of  height. 

But  could  this  long,  high  room,  even  if  it  should  have  dignity, 
have  legitimately  any  other  kind  of  attractiveness?  The  bits  of 
plaster  found  clinging  to  the  old  stonework  of  the  north  wall 
make  it  probable  that  at  first  this  end  of  the  original  room 
presented  the  aspect,  picturesque,  perhaps,  but  not  beautiful, 
of  rough  plastering  on  rough  stones.  When  the  room  was 
lengthened  (if  it  was),  this  might  have  been  covered  by  a  wains- 
cot or  hangings  or  both.  But  if  Whitfield,  as  I  have  suggested, 
desired  to  set  an  example  of  simplicity  and  economy,  then  the 
chances  seem  to  be  that  his  large  hall  was  characterized  by  the 
very  rude  simplicity  of  bare,  uneven  walls.  In  1632,  or  earlier, 
Governor  Winthrop  himself  condemned  costly  wainscots  as  a  bad 
example  "in  the  beginning  of  a  plantation."*  On  the  other 
hand,  not  only  must  Mr.  Whitfield  have  been  familiar  with 
handsome  oak  panelling  in  England,  and  very  possibly  under 
his  father's  roof,  but  close  at  hand  in  New  Haven,  then  famous 
for  its  expensive  houses,  there  seems  to  have  been  some  fine  oak 
wainscoting  of  "the  best  of  joiner's  work,"  and  Governor  Eaton's 

*  Savage's  Winthrop,  ed.  1853,  i.  88. 


WHITFIELD  HOUSE  AND  HISTORICAL  MUSEUM  ly 

great  house,  furnished  with  hangings  of  different  colors  (as 
with  tapestry  for  the  beds),  in  the  upper  rooms,  may  well  have 
had  a  wainscoted  hall  and  parlor  below  stairs.*  And  since  it 
was  not  seemly  to  lodge  the  commonwealth  of  Connecticut  in 
something  a  good  deal  like  a  barn,  and  since  an  oak  wainscot 
would  illustrate  some  interiors  which  could  have  been  found  by 
the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  in  what  is  now  Connecti- 
cut, and  since  Mr.  Whitfield  was  rich  enough  to  have  had  such 
adornments  had  he  wished,  the  chief  exhibition  room  of  the 
Historical  Museum  was  furnished  with  a  simple  oak  panelling 
of  a  pattern  to  be  seen  in  the  room  itself  in  various  photographs 
of  English  interiors  of  Whitfield's  period  and  even  of  his  county 
of  Surrey.  A  wainscot  covering  the  whole  wall  would  have 
been  too  costly,  as  would  tapestry  or  leather  hangings.  Accord- 
ingly green  burlap,  as  having  a  sort  of  neutral  character  and 
easily  to  be  replaced  by  something  else,  was  used  above  the 
woodwork.  Even  this  might  suggest  in  a  modest  way  the  hang- 
ings in  Governor  Eaton's  "greene  chamber"  where  Whitfield 
may  have  slept.  To  place  the  stairs,  patterned  after  ancient 
examples,  in  the  space  occupied  by  the  ancient  stairwell,  and  to 
open  a  fireplace  in  the  south  chimney  such  as  must  in  early 
times  have  faced  the  great  one  at  the  north  end,  came  as  near 
being  restoration  as  the  case  admitted  of.  The  new  fireplace, 
it  is  true,  had  to  be  smaller  than  the  old  one  because  the  south 
chimney,  a  modern  one,  is  smaller  than  the  other.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  feature  of  the  larger  English  halls,  the  gallery  for 
musicians,  was  almost  reproduced  unintentionally  when  a  railing 
was  placed  for  safety  on  that  side  of  the  small  entry  at  the 
head  of  the  stairs  which  faces  the  larger  room,  at  a  considerable 
height  above  the  floor  of  the  latter.  This  gives  very  much  the 
effect  of  a  gallery,  though  at  the  side  instead  of  the  end  of  the 
apartment,  as  in  the  old  halls.  It  has  to  be  acknowledged  that 
the  somewhat  ornate  room  looks  rather  out  of  keeping  with  the 
rude  fireplace  which  is  by  far  its  most  important  feature  and 
which  is  worth  immeasurably  more  than  any  amount  of  grace- 
ful decoration.  But  sooner  or  later  this  hall  could  reasonably 
be  expected  to  be  occupied  by  handsome  old  furniture  and  the 

*  Stiles,  History  of  Judges,  pp.  64,  66,  and  N.  H.  Prob.  Rec.;   quot.  in 
Isham  and  Brown's  Early  Conn.  Houses,  pp.  97-111,  287-296. 


20  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

walls  to  be  hung  with  pictures,  even  more  sadly  out  of  keeping 
with  an  ungainly  environment.  And  the  old  fireplace,  a  price- 
less possession,  would  justify  itself  even  in  a  palace,  like  a  king 
in  rusty  armor  standing  in  the  midst  of  bowing  or  kneeling 
courtiers  in  silk  and  velvet. 

In  all  that  I  have  said  thus  far  about  the  Henry  Whitfield 
house  I  have  really  been  talking  about  the  State  Historical 
Museum  and  its  collections.  For  the  house  is  the  great  feature 
of  that  and  them,  the  choicest  treasure  of  the  institution,  exclu- 
sively and  securely  its  own.  And  the  act  of  the  legislature  estab- 
lishing the  Museum  was  in  a  manner  the  announcement  by  our 
Little  Mother,  the  Commonwealth  of  Connecticut,  of  her  intention 
to  do  honor  to  Whitfield's  dwelling  by  making  herself  a  home 
at  his  fireside.  The  announcement  was  at  first  heeded  almost 
unconsciously  by  those  who  had  to  introduce  her  into  her 
domicile.  The  first  entry  in  the  manuscript  catalogue  is  that  of 
the  gift,  coming  from  the  State  capital,  and  sent  by  a  member 
of  the  Governor's  staff,  of  a  letter  written  in  1781  by  a  Con- 
necticut soldier  who  had  commanded  a  brigade  in  the  campaign 
against  Burgoyne,  and  two  of  whose  descendants,  natives  of 
Litchfield,  have  been  very  nearly  the  most  famous  of  American 
men  and  women,  and  addressed  to  a  state  official,  brother  of  a 
Connecticut  signer  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
nephew  of  an  early  head  of  Yale  college,  and  one  who,  by 
pledging  his  personal  credit  to  the  State,  helped  to  equip  the 
expedition  which  under  the  Connecticut  hero,  Ethan  Allen,  took 
Ticonderoga.  Next  come  two  relics  of  the  Charter  Oak,  another 
"Talking  Oak,"  with  a  large  part  of  what  is  most  memorable  in 
the  commonwealth  to  tell  us  of.  And  it  soon  became  an  object 
of  conscious  and  special  effort  to  make  the  collections,  which 
can  never  be  very  large,  illustrative  as  far  as  possible  of  the 
history  of  the  State  and  the  life  of  its  people.  It  was  felt  that 
this  small  institution  could  best  justify  its  existence  and  prove 
its  right  to  be  called  a  State  institution  by  thus  limiting  its 
scope.  It  can  never  enter  into  competition  with  a  society  like 
this,  for  example,  even  in  the  field  in  which  they  glean  together, 
but  it  can  aspire  to  have  at  least  a  distinctive  character  in  virtue 
of  what  it  forbears  to  glean  in  other  fields.  And  undoubtedly 
there  remain,  in  spite  of  the  zeal  of  associated  and  individual 


WHITFIELD  HOUSE  AND  HISTORICAL  MUSEUM  21 

collectors,  busy  at  their  task  for  generations,  enough  objects  of 
historical  interest  in  garrets  and  cellars  and  barns,  and  in  beautiful 
old  colonial  parlors,  to  fill  the  Whitfield  house  several  times  over. 
Let  me  give  an  example  of  the  way  in  which  our  slowly  growing 
collections,  still  short  of  five  hundred  deposits,*  illustrate  the 
early  life  of  our  people,  their  industry,  their  thrift,  their  ingenuity, 
in  virtue  of  all  of  which  nobody  employed  another  to  do  anything 
for  him  except  what  he  could  not  do  himself,  which  was  very 
little.  A  certain  series  of  deposits  begins  with  a  bundle  of  flax 
(which  had  to  be  raised  on  the  premises  for  the  purpose  last 
year,)  lying  on  a  flax  brake,  evidently  homemade,  and  used  to 
crush  the  hard  parts  of  the  stem.  Next  comes  a  very  different 
implement,  light  and  not  ungraceful,  a  wooden  flax-knife,  which 
could  easily  have  been  made  at  home  and  which  separated  the 
larger  fragments  from  the  fibre.  Then  we  have  a  hatchel,  on 
which  the  skill  of  a  craftsman  was  probably  employed,  and  by 
which  the  fibre  was  farther  cleansed  and  the  flax  freed  from 
the  tow.  The  result  of  these  processes  (with  one  or  two  others 
not  illustrated  as  yet)  is  shown  in  a  mass  of  flax  prepared  for 
spinning  more  than  seventy  years  ago.  The  flax-wheel  follows, 
the  wheel  itself  made  by  the  wheelwright,  who  in  those  days 
was  commonly  near  at  hand,  but  the  frame  probably  constructed 
on  the  farm,  while  the  four  curved  branches  of  the  distaff  were 
joined  at  one  end  in  the  woods  by  nature,  at  the  other  end  by 
anybody  who  could  tie  a  string.  With  the  wheel  goes  the  cup 
in  which  the  spinner's  fingers  must  be  moistened,  and  of  which 
two  forms  are  on  exhibition,  both  chiefly  of  nature's  making. 
One  is  a  small  gourd  from  the  garden,  which  the  boy  who 
picked  it  could  finish  with  his  knife ;  the  other,  rather  less  primi- 
tive, became  brought  within  reach  by  the  progress  of  New  Eng- 
land commerce,  the  shell  of  a  cocoanut,  but  also  prepared  for 
duty  at  the  wheel  in  a  domestic  factory.  Next  to  the  spinning- 
wheel  and  its  appurtenances  there  is  a  reel  for  winding  the 
linen  thread  into  skeins ;  then  swifts  for  winding  the  skeins  into 
balls;  a  quill-wheel  for  transferring  the  balls  by  another  wind- 
ing to  the  quills,  or  bobbins,  which  were  to  be  slipped  into  the 

*  The  number  of  deposits  in  the  Museum  April  22,  1911,  was  751.  A 
few  loans  had  been  recalled  and  a  very  few  articles  were  missing.  The 
number  of  visitors  registered  April  i  was  just  15,000. 


22  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

shuttle  for  weaving ;  specimens  of  quills  and  a  couple  of  shuttles 
as  representatives  of  the  loom,  itself  too  large  to  be  exhibited;* 
and  finally  a  linen  napkin  which  the  weaver  had  left  half  woven 
when  he  dropped  his  shuttle  one  day  and  picked  up  his  musket 
and  marched  away,  perhaps  to  Bunker  Hill,  to  finish  his  work 
when  he  came  home. 

In  the  Museum  are  to  be  seen  a  few,  as  yet  too  few,  memorials 
of  colonial  gentility,  as  also  of  colonial  scholarship.  There  is 
the  great  wainscot  chair  of  Governor  Leete,  a  less  imposing  chair 
of  Governor  Saltonstall,  a  roundabout  chair  of  John  Hart,  first 
minister  of  East  Guilford  and  long  regarded  as  the  first  graduate 
of  Yale  college,  a  patch-box  which  comes  originally  from  a 
branch  of  the  Wolcotts,  with  a  tiny  mirror  under  its  lid  to 
show  the  lady  whether  the  patches  were  in  their  places  on  her 
cheek  or  her  chin,  and  the  triangular  wooden  hat-box  in  which 
Captain  Nathaniel  Johnson  (who  by  the  way,  married  a  descend- 
ant of  Governor  Eaton)  kept  his  cocked  hat.  His  more 
distinguished  brother,  Samuel  Johnson  of  Stratford  and  King's 
College,  appears  in  a  manuscript  lecture  on  logic,  read  to  his 
pupils  in  New  Haven,  in  1717,  when  he  was  not  yet  one  and 
twenty,  and  who  happened,  just  then,  to  constitute  the  entire 
resident  faculty  of  the  college;  and  also  in  a  definition  of 
geology  given  by  him  incidentally  in  1730,  and  then  as  cor- 
rect as  it  was  comprehensive,  and  which  embraced,  among  other 
subjects  of  terrestrial  inquiry,  optics,  navigation  and  music. 

In  illustrating  the  history  of  the  commonwealth  some  empha- 
sis has  designedly  been  given  to  its  less  known  passages.  This 
illustration  (not  to  speak  of  a  few  books  which  we  hope  will 
grow  into  many)  is  for  the  most  part  very  simple  and  inexpen- 
sive, for  there  have  been  scarcely  any  funds  for  the  purchase 
of  such  objects  as  we  would  gladly  have  obtained.  There  is 
as  yet  no  endowment  and  the  State  appropriations  serve  chiefly 
for  current  expenses  and  urgent  improvements.  To  make  sure 
of  going  back  far  enough  in  history,  there  is  a  plate,  sent  us 
from  England,  and  showing  the  arrowheads  used  by  neolithic 
man  before  Britain  had  become  an  island,  procured  for  com- 
parison with  those  used  by  the  race  from  whom  our  fathers 

*  But  since  procured  and  placed  with  a  variety  of  the  homelier  deposits 
in  the  spacious  attic,  now  well  lighted. 


WHITFIELD  HOUSE  AND  HISTORICAL  MUSEUM  23 

bought  our  territory.  The  progress  which  followed  is  curiously 
exhibited  in  a  stone  axe  lying  beside  an  English-made  toma- 
hawk, testifying  to  the  growth  of  peaceful  (and  profitable)  trade. 
There  are  certain  mementoes  of  the  Tories,  illustrative  of  the 
ample  good  that  was  in  them,  and  was  rather  prodigally  given 
away  in  the  persons  of  the  exiles  who  founded  New  Brunswick 
and  Ontario.  There  are  maps,  mostly  homemade  and  to  be 
replaced,  it  may  be  hoped,  by  better  ones  some  day,  showing 
Connecticut  before  the  charter,  when  it  included  a  large  part  of 
Long  Island  and  had  an  Atlantic  coast;  and  Connecticut  after 
the  charter,  when  as  far  as  the  king's  word  availed,  it  stretched 
across  the  continent  and  had  a  Pacific  coast;  and  a  Connecticut 
town  named  Westmoreland,  belonging  to  Litchfield  county  in 
1774,  and  bringing  in  the  Susquehanna  and  the  Delaware,  which 
watered  it,  to  be  sisters  of  the  Housatonic  and  the  Naugatuck. 

But  I  must  close  abruptly  with  a  word  of  acknowledgment, 
spoken  not  in  forgetfulness  of  many  other  most  generous  con- 
tributors, but  as  an  act  of  simple  justice  to  a  company  of  ladies 
who,  as  an  organization  and  as  individuals  have,  next  to  the 
State  itself,  done  most  to  create  and  equip  the  Museum,  the 
Connecticut  Society  of  the  Colonial  Dames  of  America.  After 
giving  nearly  one-tenth  of  the  purchase  money,  they  paid  more 
than  two-thirds  of  the  cost  of  the  recent  changes,  while  members 
of  the  society  have  made  very  valuable  additions  to  the  collec- 
tions, and  two  of  them  have  rendered  services,  some  of  which 
can  hardly  be  over-estimated,  on  the  board  of  trustees.  Thus 
daughters  of  Whitfield  and  Davenport  and  Hooker,  of  Leete  and 
Eaton  and  Haynes,  have  with  others  provided  a  fair  chamber 
for  our  Little  Mother  in  which  she  may  dwell  for  coming 
centuries  in  the  grave,  spiritual  beauty  of  her  most  strenuous 
youth.  And  by  that  fireside,  which  is  an  altar,  none  of  whatever 
creed  will  forbid  her  to  confess  the  enduring  Power  which  makes 
for  righteousness  in  her  own  creed,  already  recited  for  centuries, 
Qui  transtulit  sustinet* 

*  The  motto  of  Connecticut ;  "He  who  transplanted  sustains." 
[The  necessary  revision  of  this  paper  has  been  made  difficult  by  the 
writer's  impaired  health.  He  has  particularly  to  regret  that  he  could  not 
get  access  to  his  notes,  stored  for  two  or  three  years  in  closets  and  else- 
where, without  too  much  physical  effort,  and  is  therefore  able  to  furnish 
very  few  references,  and  to  make  but  scanty  acknowledgment  of  valuable 
assistance.] 


ON  LINE 

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MODERN  FIRCPLACE 


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KINDLY    FURNISHED    (IN    THE    FORM    OF    A    DRAWING    WHICH    COULD    NOT 

BE    REPRODUCED    TO    ADVANTAGE)    BY    THE    ARCHITECT    WHO 

DESIGNED   THE    EXHIBITION    ROOM,    MR.    NORMAN    M. 

ISHAM,    OF    PROVIDENCE,    R.    I. 


PAPERS  READ 

AT   THE 

FORMAL  OPENING 

OF   THE 

STATE   HISTORICAL  MUSEUM, 

IN   THE 

HENRY  WHITFIELD  HOUSE, 

September  21,  1904. 


GUILFORD  AMONG  HER  NEIGHBORS. 

By  Professor  Samuel  Hart,  D.D.,  D.C.L.,  of  the  Berkeley  Divinity  School, 
Middletown,  President  of  the  Connecticut  Historical  Society. 

We  who  have  come  from  other  parts  of  the  State  in  answer 
to  your  kind  invitation,  may  be  pardoned  for  asking  why  it  is 
that  a  State  Historical  Museum  should  be  established  in  this 
town.  It  is  not  the  first  place  founded  in  the  limits  of  what 
is  now  Connecticut,  nor  is  it  the  capital  city,  nor  yet  at  the 
centre  of  territory  or  of  population.  We  cannot  expect  that 
the  building  will  open  its  doors  to  throngs  of  tourists,  who,  after 
giving  hours  to  other  objects  of  interest  on  their  line  of  travel, 
will  turn  aside  here  for  a  few  minutes  and  come  out  to  check 
off  in  the  guide-book  one  more  thing  seen  and  out  of  the  way. 
None  of  these  too  obvious  reasons  will  account  for  our  gather- 
ing here  to-day.  Something,  indeed  a  great  deal,  might  be  said 
for  the  enthusiasm  and  energy  of  one  who  has  made  the  his- 
tory and  fortunes  of  his  adopted  town  his  own,  has  taught  even 
its  own  citizens  to  take  a  new  interest  in  it,  and  has  waited  for 
opportunities  to  claim  for  it  an  honored  place  in  the  common- 
wealth. And  again,  we  confess  that  there  is  no  place  within 
our  borders  where  there  is  ready  to  hand  a  building  like  this — 
ancient,  far  beyond  any  other  structure  in  the  State,  perhaps 
beyond  any  other  in  neighboring  states,  and  probably  the 
oldest  dwelling  in  the  territory  of  the  thirteen  colonies  (for  I 
think  that  even  professional  skeptics  would  find  it  very  hard 
to  prove  the  existence  of  an  older  one),  built  as  strong  as,  a 
fort,  and  doubtless  meant  to  be  ready  to  do  duty  as  a  fort, 
and  also  as  spacious  as  a  public  hall,  and  a  public  hall  of  meeting 
we  know  it  was  as  it  is  to-day.  The  structure  still  standing 
after  all  these  years  in  a  half  isolated  dignity,  has  invited  the 
use  to  which  it  is  now  dedicated.  And  it  is  a  great  satis- 
faction to  us  who  represent  historical  societies  and  patriotic 
associations,  who  care  for  records  and  mementos  of  the  past, 
to  know  that  as  far  as  personal  pledges  and  official  action  can 


28  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

determine  the  future,  the  Old  Stone  House  is  forever  safe  from 
harmful  decay  and  from  no  less  harmful  innovation,  and  is  made 
of  permanent  service  to  the  commonwealth. 

But  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  there  is  another  reason,  such 
as  may  be  called  historical  or  may  be  called  mystical  and  per- 
haps is  both,  which  makes  Guilford  a  suitable  place  for  the 
custody  of  some  of  those  things  which  we  include  under  the 
name  of  the  antiquities  of  Connecticut.  The  place  which  this 
settlement  held  among  its  neighbors  made  it  in  some  way  a  logi- 
cal centre  for  them.  When  the  first  colonists  came  here  in 
1639,  there  were  three  distinct  settlements  of  distinct  character- 
istics within  the  limits  of  what  was  to  be  the  Colony  and  later 
the  State  of  Connecticut.  On  the  west  bank  of  the  Great  River, 
the  Ultima  Thule  of  that  day,  safely  below  the  bounds  of  Massa- 
chusetts, was  a  new  commonwealth,  embodying  clearly  defined 
theories  in  church  and  in  State,  destined  to  be  the  model  of  a 
great  republic  and  indeed  of  all  modern  constitutional  govern- 
ment; it  had  been  founded  by  practical  men,  led  by  a  practical 
preacher  and  a  practical  lawyer,  and  it  had  a  very  practical 
purpose.  About  the  same  time,  at  the  mouth  of  the  same  river 
and  also  on  its  western  bank,  another  party  of  men  had  built 
a  fort  and  had  laid  out  a  tract  of  land  for  the  occupation  of 
persons  of  quality  and  others  who  were  expected  soon  to  arrive ; 
theirs  was  the  military  government  of  the  day,  and  the  men  who 
were  stationed  there  were  on  the  watch  not  only  for  the  protec- 
tion of  the  interests  of  those  whom  they  immediately  repre- 
sented, but  also -for  the  defence  of  their  neighbors;  their  leaders 
were  a  soldier  and  an  engineer.  A  few  years  later,  a  third 
company,  who  had  come  from  England  by  way  of  Boston,  had 
found  a  home  for  themselves  at  the  fair  haven  made  by  the 
mouth  of  the  Quinnipiack,  and  had  laid  out  there  a  four-square 
city;  they  combined  a  spirit  of  theocracy  and  a  spirit  of  com- 
mercial enterprise;  they  were  led  by  a  theologian  and  a  wealthy 
merchant.  Close  after  them  came  the  settlers  of  this  town, 
sailing  directly  from  England,  bringing  with  them  Mr.  Daven- 
port's child,  whom  they  left  with  the  parents  at  New  Haven, 
and  Mr.  Fenwick  (coming  for  the  second  time)  and  his  wife 
the  Lady  Boteler,  whom  they  had  escorted  half  of  the  way  to 
the  Saybrook  fort  when  they  reached  this  fair  plain  and  laid  out 


GUILFORD  AMONG   HER   NEIGHBORS  29 

the  common  about  which  they  were  to  dwell.  They  were  dis- 
tinctively a  company  of  yeomen,  as  the  phrase  then  went,  and 
this  was  the  typical  settlement  of  farmers;  and  they  were  a 
body  of  young  men — their  leader,  to  be  sure,  was  forty-six 
years  old,  but  no  other  of  the  "pillars"  had  passed  his  thirtieth 
year.  Midway  between  an  aristocratic  government  and  a  mili- 
tary post,  they  made  a  civil  compact  in  which  special  precau- 
tions were  taken  that  there  should  be  no  great  inequality  based 
on  wealth,  and  they  kept  here  for  themselves  and  for  posterity 
the  large-bodied,  wide-horned,  red  cattle  which  the  wife  of  the 
governor  of  Saybrook  had  brought  to  these  shores.  Their 
organization  was  largely  based  on  that  of  the  New  Haven 
colony,  with  which  indeed  the  community  soon  became  united, 
while  their  building  was  somewhat  in  the  style  of  that  at  the 
mouth  of  the  river  to  the  east.  For  this,  though  undoubtedly 
the  largest  and  the  strongest,  was  not  the  only  stone  structure 
here;  there  were  other  stone  houses  and  there  was  a  stone 
meeting-house,  a  marvel  for  those  times. 

Mr.  Davenport,  it  was  said  by  one  of  his  contemporaries,  was 
"more  fit  for  Zebulon's  ports  than  for  Issachar's  tents;"  the 
Guilford  farmers  did  not  seek  a  port,  though  they  took  up  their 
lands  not  far  from  the  sound;  they  were  rather  like  the  patri- 
arch's description  of  Issachar,  a  strong  beast  of  burden  crouch- 
ing down  in  a  land  which  he  saw  to  be  pleasant,  bowing  his 
shoulder  to  bear  burdens  and  made  to  labor  hard  at  his  task. 
And  in  them  we  may  see,  as  I  think,  the  combination  of  certain 
of  the  most  distinctive  features  of  their  neighbors  to  the  right 
hand  and  to  the  left. 

And  I  believe  that  we  can  also  see  something  which  makes 
a  connection  between  this  settlement  and  the  colony  directly 
north  of  it  in  Hartford  and  the  sister  towns.  There  was  an 
independence  here  and  a  practical  way  of  making  plans  and 
putting  them  into  operation  which  reminds  us  of  Hooker  and 
Ludlow.  If  the  compact  which  was  formed  seemed  even  more 
locally  ecclesiastical  than  did  that  made  in  New  Haven,  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  it  was  in  order  that  it  might  escape  the 
danger  of  interference  from  the  stronger  people  to  the  west. 
There  must  have  been  here  from  the  first  some  ground  of 
sympathy  with  the  democracy  of  the  Connecticut  colony.  Those 


30  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

who  had  not  the  franchise  were  not  debarred  from  the  meetings 
of  the  burgesses,  but  had  even  the  right  of  speaking  in  them; 
and  equal  social  standing  and  equal  power  of  public  debate 
do  not  consist  with  exclusive  political  rights  and  theories. 
There  were  those  in  the  New  Haven  confederation  who  sub- 
mitted quite  willingly  when  they  learned  that  Connecticut  had 
a  charter  and  that  the  bounds  of  its  jurisdiction  extended  over 
the  settlements  of  the  New  Haven  colony;  among  them  were 
some,  like  Governor  Leete,  who  felt  strongly  the  need  of  union 
and  were  willing  to  make  sacrifices  for  it,  and  others  who,  like 
Bray  Rossiter,  claimed  that  they  were  debarred  from  the  rights 
of  English  subjects  and  called  into  question  the  civil  authority 
of  the  jurisdiction.  Thus  Guilford  bore  her  share,  and  more 
than  her  share,  in  preparation  for  the  union  and  in  accepting 
it  when  it  was  proclaimed;  and  as  it  made  a  link  between  the 
two  colonies  on  the  shore,  so  it  was  ready,  after  Saybrook  had 
been  united  with  Connecticut,  to  assist  in  bringing  Connecticut 
and  New  Haven  under  one  government. 

We  may  go  farther  yet,  and  trace  a  connection,  and  almost 
claim  a  neighborhood,  between  our  ancestors  here  and  the 
Massachusetts  colony.  For  did  not  John  Higginson,  who  had 
taught  the  grammar  school  in  Hartford,  and  had  been  chaplain 
of  the  Saybrook  fort,  and  had  come  here  to  be  colleague  of  Mr. 
Whitfield — did  not  John  Higginson,  when  he  had  started  to 
return  to  England,  stop  at  his  father's  old  home  in  Salem,  accept 
ordination  to  the  charge  of  the  church  there,  and  minister  to 
the  people  of  that  typical  Massachusetts  town  for  eight  and  forty 
years?  And  if  we  would  pursue  neighborhood  beyond  the  seas, 
we  may  well  remember  that  the  first  minister  here,  Mr.  Henry 
Whitfield,  whose  name  this  house  will  ever  bear  and  whose 
memorial  it  will  ever  be,  ministered  to  the  end  of  his  days  by 
virtue  of  the  authority  which  he  had  received  when  he  accepted 
ordination  at  the  hands  of  a  bishop  of  England,  his  being  the 
only  example,  as  far  as  I  know,  of  a  minister  in  one  of  our 
early  New  England  churches  who  had  no  special  ordination  on 
this  side  of  the  ocean. 

So  we  think  to-day  of  the  way  in  which  the  little  colony  here, 
separate  though  it  seemed  to  be  from  them  all,  had  something 
which  made  a  relationship  between  it  and  each  of  the  three 


«3  .s 
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GUILFORD  AMONG   HER   NEIGHBORS  31 

original  colonies,  to  north,  to  west,  and  to  east,  had  until  well 
into  the  eighteenth  century  a  living  connection  with  Massa- 
chusetts, and  did  not  wantonly  break  with  the  mother  land  of 
England. 

The  stone  house  standing  here — if  neighbors  came  from  New 
Haven  they  might  have  called  it  a  mansion ;  or  from  Saybrook, 
a  fort;  or  from  Hartford,  a  town  hall.  Mansion  and  fort  and 
town  hall  it  was;  but  we  have  chief  pleasure  in  thinking  of  it 
as  a  home,  the  home  of  the  chief  man  of  the  place,  the  pastor 
and  the  leader  of  the  community.  And  it  is  well  that,  restored 
as  near  as  may  be  to  the  pristine  arrangement  of  its  ample 
spaces,  with  walls  which  it  will  need  many  times  the  centuries 
that  have  already  passed  over  them  to  bring  to  dust,  not 
crowded  by  structures  of  these  latter  days,  but  standing  as  of 
old  in  the  open  fields,  the  State  of  Connecticut  should  maintain 
it  as  a  place  of  historic  witness,  to  which  men  may  come  to  learn 
what  sort  of  folk  they  were  and  what  sort  of  deeds  they  did, 
who  laid  in  these  colonies  such  abiding  foundations. 

"Tantae  molis  erat  pro  nobis  condere  gentem." 


THE  COLONIAL  MINISTER. 

By  Professor  Williston  Walker,  D.D.,  of  the  Yale  Divinity  School,  New 
Haven,  President  of  the  New  Haven  Colony  Historical  Society. 

Had  we  been  gathered  this  afternoon  in  a  southern  common- 
wealth of  these  United  States  to  celebrate  colonial  beginnings, 
we  might  have  assembled  under  the  shelter  of  some  stately 
planter's  home  on  the  banks  of  the  James,  and  have  looked  upon 
its  ample  proportions,  its  dignified  exterior,  and  the  group  of 
cabins  adjoining,  in  which  its  humbler  retainers  had  found  their 
abode,  as  typical  of  the  life  of  that  bygone  age.  We  meet 
to-day  to  commemorate  the  opening  as  a  historical  museum,  not 
of  a  planter's  but  of  a  minister's  home ;  and  that  it  is  a  minis- 
ter's home  which  is  thus  set  apart  as  a  permanent  memorial  is, 
in  fact,  as  characteristic  of  the  colonial  beginnings  of  New 
England,  as  a  planter's  mansion  would  be  typical  of  the  pros- 
perous days  of  southern  colonial  life.  For  the  survival  of  the 
minister's  house,  under  the  friendly  shelter  of  which  we  are 
to-day  gathered,  may  stand  as  illustrative  of  the  significance  of 
the  minister  himself  in  early  New  England,  where  his  promi- 
nence in  all  matters  of  social  concern  and  civic  interest  was 
equal  to  that  of  any,  while  his  actual  leadership  was,  in  most 
of  the  settlements  of  New  England,  the  chief  factor  in  the  life 
of  the  community.  It  is  right  and  proper  that  we  should  set 
apart  to-day  a  minister's  home  for  the  perpetual  preservation 
of  the  memories  associated  with  the  settlement  of  this  portion 
of  the  ancient  colony  of  Connecticut. 

It  is  certainly  fitting,  therefore,  to  ask  the  question,  what 
sort  of  a  man  the  colonial  minister  was  whose  significance 
in  New  England's  beginnings  was  so  considerable. 

One  trait  which  he  shared  in  common  with  many  of  those 
of  whom  he  was  the  leader,  was  that  of  sacrifice.  It  is  hard 
for  us,  as  we  look  out  over  this  smiling  landscape  on  this  bril- 
liant September  afternoon,  to  conceive  of  the  privations  which 
were  necessitated  by  leaving  the  comfortable  homes  and  the 


THE  COLONIAL  MINISTER  33 

settled  ways  of  England  for  what  was  then  this  raw,  unsub- 
dued wilderness.  The  changes  involved  in  the  surroundings 
and  the  comforts  of  a  Cotton  abandoning  his  stately  church 
edifice  in  the  English  Boston  for  the  new,  rough  meeting-house 
amid  the  group  of  rude  dwellings  which  bore  that  name  across 
the  Atlantic,  or  of  a  Davenport  exchanging  his  London  pulpit 
for  the  sanctuary  of  the  oak  at  Quinnipiac,  wrhere  all  institu- 
tions had  to  be  created  afresh,  or  of  a  Whitfield  leaving  the 
pleasant  farming  country  of  Surrey  for  the  then  unsubdued 
wilderness  in  Guilford,  implied  sacrifices  such  as,  in  these  days 
of  easy  communication,  few  emigrants  are  called  upon  to  endure. 
It  has  often  been  said  that  the  best  gift  that  can  come  to  any 
country  is  that  of  men;  and  the  most  desirable  of  all  men  who 
can  come  as  such  gifts  are  those  who  are  moved  to  seek  new 
homes  by  the  impulse  of  conscientious  principles  rather  than 
simply  by  the  desire  to  better  their  financial  condition.  Such 
men  were  preeminently  the  colonial  ministers;  men  who  left 
comfortable  homes,  congenial  companionships,  scholarly  envi- 
ronments, that  they  might  advance  a  cause  which  was  dear  to 
them,  and  which  they  believed  to  be  that  of  righteousness  and 
truth. 

Another  characteristic  of  the  colonial  minister  in  general  was 
that  he  was  a  man  of  force.  He  was  a  strong  man,  leading 
strong  men.  Not  but  that  there  were  great  differences  in 
influence  and  power  between  the  colonial  ministers  of  New 
England ;  but  certainly,  to  cite  a  single  instance,  there  is  no  more 
remarkable  example  of  the  moulding  authority  of  a  ministerial 
leader  anywhere  to  be  found  than  that  of  John  Davenport 
at  New  Haven,  when  he  induced  the  settlers  of  that  planta- 
tion, before  a  church  had  been  formed  or  before  they  them- 
selves knew  who  would  be  members  of  it,  to  resign  the  right 
of  suffrage  by  a  self-denying  ordinance  to  those  who  should 
be  of  the  future  church  membership,  thus  very  possibly  depriv- 
ing themselves,  under  his  forceful  persuasion,  of  what  is  usually 
one  of  the  most  cherished  of  political  rights.  The  wisdom  of 
this  action  taken  under  the  New  Haven  pastor's  initiative,  I  do 
not  now  discuss ;  but  it  certainly  ranks  high  as  an  illustration  of 
persuasive  leadership.  Of  John  Cotton,  Davenport's  great  con- 
temporary at  Boston,  it  was  said,  certainly  with  exaggeration, 


34  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

but  nevertheless  with  no  inconsiderable  degree  of  warrant,  that 
"whatever  he  delivered  in  the  pulpit  was  soon  put  into  an  Order 
of  Court  if  of  a  civil,  or  set  up  as  a  practice  in  the  church  if  of 
an  ecclesiastical,  concernment."  What  was  true  of  these  two 
eminent  men  might  be  said  in  some  measure  of  the  whole  body 
of  the  colonial  ministry. 

A  third  characteristic  of  the  ministers  of  early  New  England 
was  their  love  of  education.  They  were  themselves  prevail- 
ingly men  of  superior  intellectual  training,  and  they  believed 
that  only  as  knowledge  should  be  made  accessible  to  the  many, 
as  well  as  special  training  be  given  to  the  leaders  of  the  com- 
munity, could  the  best  interests  of  State  and  Church  be  pre- 
served. John  Eliot,  that  quaintest  and  in  many  respects  most 
lovable  of  the  ministers  of  early  New  England,  well  voiced 
the  general  sentiment  which  animated  them  all  and  which  led 
to  the  planting  of  schools  and  of  a  college  in  the  very  begin- 
nings of  colonial  life,  when  he  uttered  this  prayer  while  leading 
the  devotions  of  the  "Reforming  Synod"  of  1679,  in  words 
as  sincere  as  they  were  unliturgical,  "Lord,  for  schools  every 
where  among  us!  That  our  schools  may  flourish!  That  every 
member  of  this  assembly  may  go  home,  and  procure  a  good 
school  to  be  encouraged  in  the  town  where  he  lives.  That 
before  we  die,  we  may  be  so  happy  as  to  see  a  good  school 
encouraged  in  every  plantation  of  the  country."  Certainly  the 
interest  in  education,  which  has  always  characterized  New  Eng- 
land and  which  New  England  has  made  part  of  our  national 
heritage,  is  a  debt  which  we  owe  in  no  small  degree  to  the 
impress  upon  his  own  age  of  the  colonial  minister. 

They  were  men,  too,  in  not  a  few  instances,  of  statesmanlike 
insight.  It  has  sometimes  been  alleged  that  New  England  in  its 
early  days  was  a  priest-ridden  land.  No  conception  could  be 
further  from  the  truth.  There  was  indeed  a  veneration  for  the 
ministerial  office  which  does  not  now  obtain.  It  was  a  source 
of  intellectual  light  and  spiritual  leading  to  the  community  of 
that  day  to  an  exclusive  degree  difficult  for  us  easily  to  realize 
in  an  age  in  which  so  many  other  leaderships  of  law,  of  medi- 
cine, of  science,  of  journalism,  and  of  education,  now  share 
with  it  its  former  intellectual  preeminence.  The  strength  of 
the  early  colonial  ministry  and  its  power  over  those  who  were 


SUPPOSED  APPEARANCE  OF  EXTERIOR  IN  HENRY  WHITFIELD's  TIME  :    APPROXIMATE. 


THE  COLONIAL  MINISTER  35 

moulded  by  its  influence  were  not  in  any  sacerdotal  reverence 
which  it  aroused,  but  in  its  direct  and  forceful  leadership;  and 
in  its  most  gifted  representatives  this  leadership  rose  to  states- 
manlike height.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  share  of  Roger 
Ludlow,  with  his  knowledge  of  the  law,  in  the  framing  of  the 
fundamental  orders  of  Connecticut, — and  I  would  not  abate  a 
whit  the  large  credit  that  may  be  due  to  him  for  its  content  or 
for  the  form  in  which  that  noble  constitution  of  1639  was 
clothed,  no  one  can  doubt  that  a  chief  part  of  its  inspiration 
came  from  the  brain  of  a  ministerial  founder  of  Hartford, 
Thomas  Hooker.  To  him  was  due  the  assertion,  in  the  months 
immediately  preceding  the  framing  of  the  constitution,  of  such 
cardinal  principles  of  political  wisdom  as  that  the  "foundation 
of  authority  is  laid  firstly  in  the  free  consent  of  the  people"  and 
"that  the  choice  of  the  public  magistrates  belongs  unto  the 
people  by  God's  own  allowance."  These  are  basal  truths  that 
have  been  wrought  into  the  very  fabric  of  our  American  civil 
life. 

It  is  eminently  fitting,  therefore,  that  when  we  meet  to-day 
to  open  this  State  Museum,  in  a  house  built  for  the  colonial 
minister  who  was  foremost  in  the  planting  of  this  Guilford  com- 
munity, we  should  call  to  mind  some  of  the  traits  of  these  spirit- 
ual leaders  of  early  New  England.  They  were  a  race  of  strong 
men  who  left  their  impress  upon  those  whom  they  led,  who 
witnessed  to  truth  as  they  understood  it  with  self-denying  forti- 
tude, and  who  have  made  the  story  not  merely  of  New  England, 
but  of  our  country  as  a  whole,  far  other  than  it  would  have 
been  had  they  not  done  their  work.  Well  may  we  honor  them 
to-day  for  what  they  were  and  what  they  did  in  the  time  when 
New  England's  foundations  were  laid. 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WHITFIELD. 

By  Mrs.  Frank  W.  Cheney  of  South  Manchester,  a  trustee. 

Coming  to-day  to  open  to  the  uses  of  the  Commonwealth  of 
Connecticut  this  ancient  house,  which  the  State  Trustees,  the 
Colonial  Dames  of  Connecticut,  and  the  people  of  Guilford  have 
done  their  best  to  restore  and  adorn,  there  is  no  question  that 
springs  up  in  our  minds  more  spontaneously  than  this : 

Who  and  what  manner  of  man  was  he  for  whom  it  was  built ; 
by  whose  ideas  its  form  was  shaped ;  who  slept  and  sometimes 
ate  in  it  (when  there  was  anything  to  eat)  ;  who  studied  and 
wrote, — aye,  and  preached  in  it,  and  whose  children  romped 
in  its  garret  and  were  punished  in  its  corners? 

Most  of  us  are  somewhat  familiar  with  the  facts  of  his  life 
and  have  drawn  inferences  more  or  less  truly  in  accordance 
with  them.  To  many  the  fact  of  his  return  to  England  has 
been  a  blighting  one.  But  until  we  understand  the  man  we 
cannot  understand  the  deed.  Bear  with  me,  therefore,  while 
I  rehearse  his  history,  trying  to  gather  as  we  go  such  light  as 
it  sheds  upon  his  character. 

Henry  Whitfield  was  born  in  1591,*  in  the  County  of  Surrey, 
a  region  of  softly  rolling  hills  and  deep  embowered  lanes  such 

*  This  is  the  date  given  in  Steiner's  History  of  Guilford,  and  the 
author  thinks  that  the  date  of  1591  given  in  Foster's  Alumni  Oxoniensis 
is  "clearly  wrong."  But  Whitfield  entered  Oxford  in  1610,  and  if  born 
in  1597  would  have  been  but  thirteen  years  old  at  that  time,  which 
makes  it  probable  that  Foster's  record  is  correct.  Born  in  1591  he 
would  have  entered  Oxford  aged  19,  graduated  at  23,  studied  law  two 
years,  and  entered  the  Church  in  1618,  aged  27.  The  canons  of  the 
Church  require  that  a  man  be  23  before  he  be  made  Deacon,  and  a 
year  older  before  he  may  become  Priest.  Another  fact  which  makes  it 
probable  that  he  was  born  before  1597  is  that  his  father,  Thomas  Whit- 
field, was  licensed  to  marry  Mildred  Manning,  his  mother,  on  the  loth 
of  January,  1585.  Henry  Whitfield,  their  second  son,  was  in  all  prob- 
ability born  in  less  than  twelve  years  after  their  marriage,  and  six  years 
would  be  more  likely.  Again,  it  is  very  common  to  confuse  the  numbers 
i  and  7,  which  in  those  days  were  written  much  alike,  and  so  1591  might 
have  been  read  1597.  Again,  if  but  thirteen  in  1610,  he  would  have  been 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WHITFIELD  37 

as  only  southern  England  knows.  His  father  was  Thomas 
Whitfield,  an  eminent  London  lawyer,  whose  home  was  at  Mort- 
lake  on  the  Thames,  and  whose  wealth  and  influence  enabled 
him  to  carry  out  his  ambitions  for  his  sons.  He  intended  that 
his  second  son,  Henry,  should  receive  the  education  for  which 
he  seemed  to  show  capacity,  and  should  take  his  own  place  at 
the  bar.  His  mother  was  Mildred  Manning,  a  lady  of  a  good 
Kentish  family,  in  wThose  family  lines  is  found  the  name  of 
England's  greatest  poet,  Geoffrey  Chaucer,  although  descent 
from  him  is  not  claimed.  Thus  on  both  sides  Henry  Whitfield 
came  from  families  not  noble,  but  gentle,  and  containing  some 
illustrious  names. 

Cotton  Mather,  in  a  paper  entitled  "Elisha's  Bones,  The  Life 
of  Mr.  Henry  Whitfield,"  alluding  to  the  old  saying  that  "A 
young  saint  makes  an  old  devil,"  says:  "No,  a  young  sinner 
may  make  an  old  devil,  but  a  young  saint  will  certainly  make 
an  old  angel;  and  so  did  our  blessed  Whitfield.  He  was  a 
gentleman  of  good  extraction  by  his  birth,  but  of  a  better  by  his 
new  birth,  nor  did  his  new  birth  come  very  long  after  his  birth. 
In  the  very  school  itself  he  would  be  sometimes  praying,  and  as 
he  grew  up  he  grew  exceedingly  in  his  acquaintance  with  God." 
It  is  therefore  no  surprise  to  find  that  after  graduating  at  New 
College,  Oxford,  and  beginning  upon  a  legal  training  at  the 
Inns  of  Court,  the  early  religious  tendencies  claimed  him  for 
their  own,  and,  as  Mather  says,  "The  gracious  influences  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  upon  his  heart  induced  him  to  become  a  preacher 
of  the  gospel." 

But  this  is  to  anticipate.  A  friendship  made  in  Oxford 
between  Whitfield  and  George  Fenwick  was  continued  through 
life  and  was  fraught  with  important  consequences  to  both. 
They  both  entered  the  University  in  1610  and  were  most  inti- 
mate throughout  their  stay  there.  They  both  died  in  England 
in  1657.  The  helpful  disposition  of  Fenwick  and  his  wife, 
the  Lady  Alice  Boteler,  had  much  to  do  with  Whitfield's  com- 
ing to  America,  and  settling  in  Menuncatuck,  which  lay  in  part 
upon  land  originally  purchased  of  the  Indians  by  Fenwick  and 
by  him  given  to  the  settlers  of  Guilford,  as  he  Himself  wrote 

about  eighteen  when  he  became    "the  contracted  husband"    of  Margaret 
Hardware,  who  died  in  1616. 
See  note  at  the  close  of  this  paper  by  Rev.  W.  G.  Andrews. 


38  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

to  William  Leete,  for  the  "love  he  bore  to  Mr.  Whitfield  and 
his  children."  So  do  early  friendships  shape  a  man's  destiny. 

At  this  point  we  are  tempted  to  diverge  into  a  bit  of  romance, 
which,  although  not  positively  identified  with  the  life  of  our 
Henry  Whitfield,  shows  so  remarkable  a  coincidence  in  date  that 
we  are  justified  in  assuming  that  he  is  the  man  referred  to. 

In  February,  1616,  at  which  time  it  is  supposed  that  Whitfield 
was  studying  law  in  London,  there  died  in  Peele,  County  of 
Chester,  England,  a  maiden  named  Margaret  Hardware,  daughter 
of  Henry  Hardware.  In  her  will,  probated  March  17,  1616,  there 
are  bequests  to  several  friends,  but  chief  among  them  is  the 
following : 

"Item,  I  give  to  Henrye  Whitfield,  my  contracted  husband, 
the  sum  of  one  hundred  and  forty  pounds.  Item,  I  give  to 
the  said  Henrie  Whitfeild  one  white  'beare'  bowl,  one  Tune* 
and  cover  and  three  spoons,  one  piece  of  gold  of  three  pounds 
seventeen  shillings.  Item,  I  give  unto  the  said  Henrye  Whit- 
field, more,  one  pair  of  Valence  and  two  cushions  of  needle- 
work ;  four  towels,  two  short  and  two  long ;  three  pair  of 
sheets  of  flaxen  of  the  best;  four  pillow-beares ;  one  dozen  of 
fringed  napkins,  four  of  the  best  table-cloths;  two  cupboard 
cloths;  one  feather  bed,  two  bolsters,  two  down  pillows,  one 
arras  coverlet,  four  blankets,  and  all  the  apparell  that  was  pro- 
vided for  my  marriage.  .  .  .  Memorandum,  that  if,  after 
all  my  debts  and  legacies  are  paid,  the  remainder  of  my  estate 
be  above  fifty  pounds,  that  then  Mr.  Nicholas  Byfield  have  only 
that  fifty  pounds,  and  my  loving  friend  and  contracted  hus- 
band, Mr.  Henry  Whitfeild,  have  the  rest  of  my  whole  estate. "f 

As  we  have  seen  already,  Mr.  Whitfield  studied  law  for 
a  year  or  two  after  leaving  college.  Perhaps  if  Margaret  Hard- 
ware had  not  died  he  might  have  become  a  successful  lawyer 

*  The  word  tune  is  not  found  in  any  glossaries  obtainable.  The 
Century  Dictionary  gives  as  one  meaning  of  the  word  tun,  "a  vessel 
or  jar,"  and  quotes  from  Chaucer's  Clerk's  Tale  the  line,  "Wei  ofter  of 
the  welle  than  of  the  tonne  she  drank."  An  English  glossary  of 
provincialisms  gives  as  one  definition  of  tun,  "a  small  cup."  It  is  probable 
that  "a  tune  with  cover"  was  a  covered  jar  or  vessel  of  some  kind 
to  hold  ale  or  liquor. 

fWeldon,  24.  The  spelling  of  the  name  Whitfield  alternates  between 
field  and  feild. 


THE  CHARACTER  OF   HEXRY  WHITFIELD  39 

and  thus  have  avoided  those  great  conflicts  within  the  Church 
into  which  he  was  led  by  his  religious  views.  Who  knows  how 
much  this  early  loss  may  have  paved  the  way  for  "the  gracious 
influences  of  the  Holy  Spirit"  which  took  him  into  the  ministry? 
The  affections  and  the  religious  sentiments  lie  very  near  together 
in  a  tender  and  poetic  nature,  and  the  closing  of  one  vent  for 
feeling  may  open  another.  At  all  events,  the  impulse  was 
strong  enough  to  overcome  the  opposition  of  his  family.  In 
1618  he  was  ordained  a  minister  of  the  Church  of  England, 
ordained  once  for  all,  as  he  seems  to  have  felt,  so  that  no  other 
setting  apart  for  God's  work  in  the  world  was  ever  necessary. 
In  the  same  year  he  was  made  incumbent  of  the  rich  living  of 
Ockley,  in  Surrey,  and  was  married.  At  this  time  he  was, 
according  to  Steiner,  only  twenty-one  years  of  age,  but  accord- 
ing to  Foster  twenty-seven,  and  in  view  of  his  varied  experi- 
ences the  latter  estimate  seems  much  more  probable. 

The  accepted  spelling  of  the  name  Ockley,  O-c-k-1-e-y,  deprives 
it  of  its  ancient  meaning,  which  was  Oak-lea,  the  land  of  oaks. 
"Here,"  says  an  ancient  chronicler,  "is  a  certain  custom  observed, 
time  out  of  mind,  of  planting  rose-trees  upon  the  graves,  so 
that  this  church  yard  is  now  full  of  them."  Whether  these 
roses  became  thornless,  like  those  of  St.  Francis,  we  know 
not,  but  it  is  pleasant  to  associate  our  English  saint  with  oaks 
and  roses.  His  life  at  Ockley  was  presumably  for  many  years 
one  of  the  greatest  peace  and  comfort.  His  wife  was  Dorothy 
Sheaffe,  daughter  of  Thomas  Sheaffe,  a  clergyman  of  Kent, 
and  cousin  to  Joanna  Sheaffe,  whose  mother  was  a  Jordan  and 
who  married  William  Chittenden.  Other  cousins  there  were, 
Giles  and  Phineas  Fletcher,  sons  of  an  ambassador  to  Russia 
from  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  themselves  poets,  writing  under  James 
I.  and  Charles  I.  So  here  we  find  again  poetry  and  culture  and 
high  position. 

Henry  Whitfield  and  Dorothy,  his  wife,  had  a  family  of  nine 
children,  probably  all  born  at  Ockley.*  One  died  in  infancy, 

*The  baptismal  record  of  the  children  of  Henry  Whitfield,  as  given 
in  the  N.  E.  Hist.  &  Gen.  Reg.  and  drawn  from  church  records  at 
Ockley,  is  as  follows : 

(i)  Dorothy,  bapt.  at  Ockley,  England,  March  25,  1619.  She  is  said 
to  have  been  the  wife  of  Samuel  Desborough  and  to  have 
returned  to  England  with  him.  They  had  one  daughter,  Sarah, 


40  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

another  seems  not  to  have  come  to  America.  Four  daughters 
and  two  sons  are  all  of  whom  we  have  information  in  maturity. 
He  had  abundant  means,  an  honored  position,  and  learning  and 
culture,  the  crowning  adornments  of  a  rural  life.  His  appear- 
ance is  described  as  dignified  and  prepossessing,  while  eloquence 
and  "a  marvelous  majesty  and  sanctity"  are  ascribed  to  his 
preaching.  His  manners  had  a  lofty  courtesy,  and  in  all  charity 
and  gentleness  he  lived  among  other  men  as  one  loved  and 
revered.  His  doctrines  were  accounted  satisfactory,  even  at 

born  in  Guilford,  March,  1649.  He  had  two  other  children  by  later 
marriages,  and  as  the  last  wife,  Rose  Hobson,  is  said  to  have 
been  married  to  him  in  1655,  it  is  evident  that  Dorothy  Disbrowe 
must  have  died  soon  after  they  returned  to  England,  if  not 
before. 

(2)  Sarah,  bapt.    at   Ockley,   Nov.    i,    1620;    d.    1675,   in   Salem,    Mass. 

She  married  in  1641  the  Rev.  John  Higginson,  who  was  her 
father's  assistant  as  teacher  and  minister.  In  1659  they  set 
sail  for  England,  but  encountering  bad  weather  put  in  to  Salem, 
where  Mr.  Higginson  had  lived  in  his  youth,  and  he  remained 
there  more  than  forty  years. 

(3)  Abigail,  bapt.  at  Ockley,  Sept.  i,  1622;   d.  Sept.  9,  1659.     She  married 

Rev.  James  Fitch  of  Saybrook;  they  had  nine  children,  and 
they  went  with  a  Saybrook  colony  to  Norwich,  which  they  helped 
to  settle. 

(4)  Thomas,  bapt.  at  Ockley  Dec.  28,  1624.     Probably  did  not  come  to 

Guilford;   may  have  died  young. 

(5)  John,  bapt.   at   Ockley   Feb.    u,    1626.    He   came  to   Guilford   with 

his  father  and  went  early  to  New  Haven,  after  which  he  seems 
to  have  disappeared  from  history. 

(6)  Nathaniel,  bapt.  at  Ockley,  June  28,  1629.    He,  as  well  as  John,  was 

excused  from  the  night  watch  in  Guilford.  He  returned  to 
England  probably  about  1654,  and  became  a  merchant.  He  is 
more  widely  known  in  connection  with  his  family  than  any  other 
member  of  it,  and  was  with  his  father  as  witness  of  his  will 
just  before  his  death  in  1657.  He  was  also  executor  of  his 
mother's  will.  Samuel  Sewall  addressed  a  letter  to  him  at  the 
"Navy  Office"  in  London,  1691. 

(7)  Mary,  bapt.  at  Ockley,  March  4,  1631;   a  witness  to  her  father's  will. 

(8)  Henry,  bapt.  at  Ockley,  March  9,  1633;   died  there  February  28,  1634. 

(9)  Rebecca,  bapt.  at  Ockley,  December  25,  1635. 

In  the  Mass.  Hist.  Coll.,  6th  Series,  between  dates  1600  and  1699, 
there  are  letters  from  Samuel  Sewall  and  Wait  Winthrop,  in  which 
Mr.  Whitfield,  Mr.  Nathaniel  Whitfield  and  Mr.  Samuel  Whitfield  are 
mentioned. 


THE  CHARACTER  OF   HENRY  WHITFIELD  41 

that  critical  period.  People  flocked  in  from  the  surrounding 
country  to  hear  him  preach,  and  says  Mather:  "Observing  that 
he  did  more  good  by  preaching  sometimes  abroad  than  by 
preaching  always  at  home,  and  enjoying  then  a  living  of  the 
first  magnitude  beside  a  fair  estate  of  his  own,  he  procured  and 
maintained  another  godly  minister  at  Okeley,  and  had  the 
liberty  to  preach  in  many  other  places  which  were  destitute  of 
ministers."  In  this  manner  his  acquaintance  in  the  neighboring 
parishes  and  counties  became  greatly  extended,  and  especially 
among  the  plain  farming  folk,  a  fact  which  in  turn  had  its 
influence  upon  his  selection  of  colonists  when  the  time  came 
later. 

This  sort  of  life,  honored,  easy  and  opulent,  continued  for 
twenty  years,  would  make  any  man  conservative,  and  Whitfield 
was  doubtless  so  by  birth  and  temperament.  Yet  we  must  not 
imagine  that  life  at  Ockley  was  all  roses.  The  times  were  diffi- 
cult and  under  Archbishop  Laud's  control  especially  and  increas- 
ingly so  for  conscientious  clergymen  of  the  Established  Church, 
as  well  as  for  those  whose  extreme  convictions  had  long 
since  made  them  Separatists.  Whitfield  had  been  for  twenty 
years  a  conformist,  but  yet,  says  Mather,  "a  pious  non-con- 
formist was  all  this  while  very  dear  unto  him."  He  was  one 
who  abounded  in  liberality  and  hospitality  and  "his  house  was 
much  resorted  unto"  by  those  pious  men  whose  non-conformity 
had  got  them  into  difficulties.  Among  these  were  Hooker  and 
Davenport,  Nye,  Cotton  and  Goodwin,  some  of  whom  were 
soon  to  be  prominent  like  himself  in  New  England,  and  his  near 
neighbors,  as  neighborhood  was  counted  in  those  scattered  and 
isolated  colonies.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  while  Whitfield  was 
educated  at  Oxford,  where  in  1611  Laud  became  president  of 
St.  John's  College,  Hooker  and  Samuel  Stone  were  students 
at  Emmanuel  in  Cambridge,  a  college  of  Puritan  foundation 
and  teaching,  a  fact  which  may  throw  light  upon  the  difference 
in  their  careers.  Hooker  and  Whitfield  very  likely  formed  their 
friendship  when  Hooker  was  settled  in  the  small  parish  of 
Esher  in  Surrey  in  1620.  From  first  to  last,  Whitfield's  views 
were  less  tinged  with  Puritanism  than  were  those  of  the  strong 
and  positive  Hooker.  At  all  events,  it  was  some  years  after 
Hooker  was  obliged  to  flee  to  Holland  before  Whitfield  was 


42  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

summoned  and  censured  by  the  High  Commission  Court,  of 
which  Laud  was  the  head,  for  not  reading  the  "Book  of  Sports" 
and  for  not  conforming  to  some  of  the  new  and  "popish" 
requirements  of  the  liturgy. 

The  name  of  Puritan  was  a  title  self-given,  by  men  who 
sought  for  purity  and  reform  within  the  Church.  According  to 
Hume,  a  Puritan  was  a  cross  between  a  mad  fanatic  and  a 
snivelling  hypocrite.  Our  New  England  idea  of  a  Puritan  is 
of  a  man  sterner  than  our  rocks  and  harsher  than  our  March 
weather. 

By  these  side-lights  we  may  get  some  idea  of  the  typical 
Puritan,  and  comparing  Whitfield  with  the  type,  we  perceive 
that  if  he  were  a  Puritan  at  all,  he  was  so  by  circumstance 
rather  than  by  nature,  and  that  the  stern  stuff  of  the  true  Puri- 
tan was  not  in  him.*  Comparing  him  with  individuals,  with 
the  astute  Winthrop,  or  the  fiery  Dudley  of  the  Massachusetts 
Colony,  with  the  long  enduring  Bradford  of  Plymouth,  or  the 
impracticable  Williams  of  Providence  Plantations,  or  even  with 
Davenport,  whose  ideas  of  a  theocracy  and  an  aristocracy  were 
so  intimately  blended,  we  can  hardly  call  him  a  Puritan. 

However,  after  serious  discussion  of  the  matters  involved 
with  some  of  his  Puritan  brethren,  "seing  much  of  scripture 
and  reason  on  their  side,"  Whitfield  became  at  once  a  declared 
non-conformist  and  prudently  left  the  ministry,  or,  as  Mather 
picturesquely  put  it,  "he  embraced  a  modest  secession."  In 
1638  he  resigned  the  living  of  Ockley,  sold  his  private  estate, 
and  made  his  plans  for  emigration  to  that  new  land  which 
seemed,  with  hand  outstretched  across  the  waste  of  waters, 
to  beckon  to  freedom  both  civil  and  spiritual.  What  matter 
if  privation  threatened  and  all  kinds  of  terrors  dismayed? 
These  were  but  the  mysterious  curtain  hanging  between  the 
pilgrim  and  his  golden  hopes  of  a  more  perfect  state. 

In  1636  Whitfield  published  in  London  a  little  book  entitled 
"Some  Helps  to  stirre  up  to  Christian  Duties."  It  was  dedi- 
cated to  Robert  Grevil,  Lord  Brooke,  who  with  Lord  Say- 

*  It  will  be  understood  that  the  word  Puritan  is  here  used  not  in  its 
strict  historical,  but  in  its  modern  popular  sense.  For  an  accurate 
definition  of  the  word,  see  The  Life  of  Thomas  Hooker,  by  Rev.  Geo. 
Leon  Walker,  D.D. 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WHITFIELD  43 

and-Sele  and  some  other  Puritan  noblemen  owned  the  royal 
patent  under  which  the  colony  of  Saybrook,  bearing  their  two 
names,  Say  and  Brooke,  was  settled  by  the  agency  of  Fenwick, 
cooperating  with  the  younger  John  Winthrop.  A  glimpse  of 
an  original  and  precious  copy  of  this  book  of  Whitfield's, 
once  the  property  of  David  Dudley  Field,  and  with  the  names 
of  sundry  previous  owners  painfully  inscribed  upon  its  title- 
page,  may  be  found  in  the  Library  of  the  Connecticut  Histori- 
cal Society  in  Hartford.  The  book  is  the  mirror  of  the  man. 
Its  perfect  and  polished  English  is  the  garb  of  thoughts  most 
tender  and  gracious  and  poetical.  He  speaks  in  figures  and 
tropes.  The  language  of  the  Bible  is  the  warp  and  woof  of 
it,  and  under  the  titles  of  the  "Caldeans"  and  of  "Bohemia," 
he  alludes  to  persons  and  places  that  had  doubtless  their  Eng- 
lish equivalents.  Could  Laud  have  been  "the  old  Dagon" 
spoken  of  as  so  wicked  and  dangerous  to  God's  people?  Would 
that  I  could  quote  it  to  you  in  such  manner  as  would  give  you 
a  sense  of  it  all.  Yet  one  passage  I  must  quote  for  its  picture 
of  the  times : 

"Some  of  you  have  scene  and  most  of  you  have  heard  of  the 
grievous  evils  that  have  befallen  us;  Behold  and  see  if  there 
was  ever  sorrow  like  unto  our  sorrow,  to  have  the  glorious 
Gospel  of  Christ  taken  from  us,  the  Arke  displaced  and  Dagon 
set  in  his  roome,  our  ministers  banished  and  our  people  betrayed 
unto  anti-Christianisme,  our  country  laid  waste  and  desolate, 
many  a  family  driven  from  home,  not  knowing  where  to  lay 
their  heads,  many  of  us  seldom  going  to  bed  with  dry  eyes, 
considering  the  many  pressures,  straights  and  necessities  of  our- 
selves and  ours." 

Again,  he  takes  the  mental  position  of  a  philosopher,  con- 
templating as  one  apart  from  the  scene  of  struggle  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  our  human  life.  "The  world,"  he  says,  "is  as  a  great 
ant  or  Emit  Hill,  where  there  are  multitudes  of  those  busie 
creatures,  carrying  and  recarrying  strawes,  stubble  and  other 
such  luggage,  and  everyone  busie  in  doing  something  and 
intent  to  adde  and  bring  to  the  heape.  So  in  this  world  there 
is  a  mighty  and  general  businesse,  an  earnest  trudging  about, 
a  continued  solicitousnesse,  plotting  and  working  upon  the  face 
of  the  earth.  The  Timeserver  is  busie  to  fit  his  sailes  to  every 
wind,  marks  what  is  in  grace  and  fashion  with  the  times,  and 


44  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

studies  how  he  may  please  the  most.  The  deepe  and  clung- 
headed*  politician,  who  dwells  many  times  the  next  door  to 
Atheisme,  is  busie  in  wheeling  about  his  owne  ends,  is  dark  in 
his  ways,  and  usually  like  a  boatman  looks  one  way  and  rowes 
another.  .  .  .  The  voluptuous  man  is  busie  to  draw  out  the 
quintessence  of  all  sinnes  and  vanities,  to  sucke  the  sweet  out 
of  them,  to  array  himself  like  a  child  of  Paradise,  and  to  have 
his  part  in  all  the  pleasures  of  Nature."  And  thus  it  appears 
that  trolley-cars,  presidential  campaigns  and  Paris  fashions  have 
not  altogether  changed  our  human  nature,  and  that  in  busy 
carrying  of  straw  and  stubble,  intentness  to  add  to  the  heap, 
earnest  trudging  about  after  nothing  and  love  of  the  sweet 
vanities,  we  are  but  imitators  of  our  ancestors. 

His  religious  expression,  if  not  profound,  nor  the  outcome 
of  an  intense  nature,  is  yet  pure  and  lofty  and  sincere,  while 
his  style  has  the  inimitable  directness  and  picture-making  quality 
of  the  Elizabethan  period.  Thus,  for  instance,  to  quote  again : 

"It  is  the  managing  of  our  spirits  that  lyeth  upon  us  as  the 
chiefest  of  our  employment.  Oh,  what  studying  is  there  in  the 
world  of  sundry  sorts  of  salutations,  garbs  and  complements! 
What  asking  of  each  others  health  and  welfare!  Yet  never  to 
ask  his  Soule  how  it  fareth;  not  so  much  as  to  bid  it  good 
morrow  or  good  even !  I  meane,  he  passeth  it  by  as  a  worthless 
and  a  neglected  thing.  What  long  pilgrimages  doe  many  make 
with  many  a  weary  step !  Yet  they  will  not  take  a  short  journey 
down  into  their  owne  hearts  nor  know  the  behaviour  and  lan- 
guage of  their  owne  Soules  and  consciences.  Yet  this,  being 
the  most  noble  worke  and  businesse  of  the  mind,  puts  a  luster 
and  beauty  upon  the  Soule.  This  is  the  speciall  part  of  wisdome 
and  makes  a  man  the  wisest  man." 

And  now  behold  Whitfield,  bidding  goodbye  to  the  study  and 
the  fruits  of  leisure  and  the  aristocratic  associations  of  a  life- 
time, and  embarking,  with  his  family  and  a  number  of  friends 
and  relatives  and  a  party  of  plain  and  mostly  poor  people  from 
his  own  neighborhood,  upon  a  life  of  action  and  practical  strug- 
gle hitherto  undreamed  of.  From  this  time  on  he  was  a  man 
out  of  his  element.  The  quality  of  leadership  was  not  born 
in  him,  although  he  had  fortunately  the  best  substitute  for  it 

*  Clung,  i.  e. :  shrunken,  wasted.  Clunch,  i.  e.  impure  clay ;  also 
close-grained,  squat,  stumpy. 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WHITFIELD  45 

in  the  power  to  win  love  and  reverence.  Danger  was  exchanged 
for  danger,  the  peril  of  English  persecution  for  the  lurking  peril 
of  the  savage,  the  prison  and  martyrdom  for  the  great  sea  and 
the  wilderness. 

He  who  would  found  a  colony  requires  first  of  all  a  prac- 
tical knowledge  of  men  and  affairs.  His  business  energy  will 
be  more  important  than  his  sanctity.  He  may  be  bigoted,  self- 
willed,  unamiable,  but  he  must  be  able  to  foresee  and  provide 
for  the  practical  needs  which  attend  the  arrival  of  a  band  of 
men,  women  and  children  in  an  unbroken  wilderness.  He  must 
know  that  the  first  demand  will  be  for  the  blacksmith  and 
the  carpenter.  He  must  remember  that  while  a  scholar  and  a 
gentleman  may  be  qualified  to  found  a  State,  he  will  need  a 
jack-of -all-trades  to  help  him  do  it.  The  men  who  accompanied 
Whitfield  to  Guilford  were  of  two  classes,  farmers  and  edu- 
cated gentry.  Among  the  latter  were  four  lawyers  and  two 
ministers,*  counting  Whitfield  himself  as  both.  There  were 
apparently  few  men  who  knew  the  trades,  no  masons,  no  black- 
smiths, perhaps  one  carpenter.  The  rest  were  mostly  farmers. 
The  yeomen  of  England  made  up  an  agricultural  population 
equal  to  any  the  world  has  ever  seen,  and  were  men  of  such 
bone  and  sinew  and  perdurable  toughness  as  to  make  the  best 
possible  material  for  colonization.  It  was,  however,  only  after 
they  had  been  trained  for  generations  in  the  school  of  dire  neces- 
sity that  they  developed  the  ingenuity,  the  ready  wit,  the  faculty 
for  everything,  the  comprehensive,  all-around  knowingness 
which  go  to  make  up  the  complete  and  finished  Yankee. 

On  shipboard,  while  slowly  sailing  to  their  promised  land, 
this  band  of  emigrants  made  with  each  other  a  solemn  covenant 
and  signed  to  it  their  twenty-five  names.  It  was  probably  writ- 
ten by  Whitfield  and  his  signature  is  last  on  the  list.  The  chief 
engagement  made  in  this  covenant  reads  thus :  "And  we  promise 
not  to  desert  or  leave  each  other  or  the  plantation,  but  with 
the  consent  of  the  rest,  or  the  greater  part  of  the  Company 
who  have  entered  into  this  engagment."  We  shall  see  how 
these  promises  were  kept. 

Time  fails  to  tell  of  the  steps  of  the  Colony's  progress,  nor 
need  it  be  repeated  here.  Arrived  at  New  Haven,  it  seems  to 

*  There  is  some  doubt  whether  Hoadly  acted  as  a  minister  until,  after 
his  return  to  Scotland,  he  became  chaplain  of  Edinburgh  Castle. 


46  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

have  been  Mr.  Whitfield  who  bought  the  Indian  lands  and 
pledged  his  own  means  for  the  purchase.  He  seems  to  have 
imbibed  there  some  of  the  governmental  ideas  of  Davenport, 
with  their  theocratic  features.  The  vote  by  Church  members 
only,  the  seven  pillars,  the  title  to  lands  being  vested  in  the 
Church,  etc.,  were  features  not  at  once  developed,  but  which 
appeared  after  they  were  more  settled.  When  a  court  was 
formed  Whitfield  never  assumed  the  functions  of  magistrate 
or  judge,  but  he  knew  enough  law  to  have  done  so,  and  doubt- 
less guided  the  young  men  who  performed  the  actual  duties. 
They  desired  an  independent  state  and  a  constitution  of  their 
own,  and  the  fascinating  task  of  cutting  a  new  one  out  of  the 
whole  cloth  tempted  them,  as  it  tempted  other  men  occupying 
virgin  soil  and  dreaming  of  an  ideal  republic.  But  seeing  them- 
selves between  the  Scylla  of  New  Haven  and  the  Charybdis 
of  the  Connecticut  Colony,  and  sure  to  be  swallowed  by  one  or 
the  other,  they,  under  the  guidance  of  Whitfield,  chose  New 
Haven  and  a  theocracy,  rather  than  the.  untried  democracy  of 
the  larger  state.  In  doing  so  they  but  made  an  instinctive  rever- 
sion to  an  aristocratic  form  of  government  such  as  they  had 
lived  under  in  England. 

In  standing  at  the  head  of  a  colony  Whitfield  had  one  inesti- 
mable advantage  in  that  he  was  a  minister.  "The  divinity 
that  doth  hedge  a  king"  was,  in  New-Englandese,  the  divinity 
that  doth  hedge  a  minister.  Perhaps  that  is  what  "doctor  of 
divinity"  means.  He  was  considered  to  be  the  vicegerent  of 
the  Almighty.  An  indescribable  awe  hedged  him  about  and 
made  his  every  word  and  wish  of  sovereign  weight  and  import. 
Mather  says  that  Whitfield  "carried  much  authority  with  him, 
and  using  frequently  to  visit  the  particular  families  of  his 
flock,  with  profitable  discourses  on  the  great  concerns  of  their 
interiour  state,  it  is  not  easy  to  describe  the  reverence  with  which 
they  entertained  him."  It  is  said  that  in  the  dreadful  poverty 
of  the  following  years  "he  mightily  encouraged  the  people  to 
bear  with  Christian  patience  and  fortitude  the  difficulties  of  the 
wilderness  they  were  come  into,  not  only  by  his  exhortations 
but  also  by  his  own  exemplary  contentment  with  low  and  mean 
things."  He  never  labored  with  his  hands,  and  he  begged  that 
his  two  sons,  Nathaniel  and  John,  might  be  excused  from  the 
night-watch  of  the  town,  with  its  discomforts  and  perils,  show- 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  HENRY  WHITFIELD  47 

ing  that  he  considered  them  privileged  persons,  and  apparently 
valuing  their  safety  above  their  hardihood. 

Building  of  houses  went  on  along  with  state-building.  The 
stone  house  for  the  minister  was  probably  one  of  the  first 
erected.  The  choice  of  site  was  good  and  the  house  perhaps 
better  than  anyone  else  in  the  colony  could  afford.  Its  simple 
lines  express  not  so  much  the  taste  of  the  owner  as  the  limi- 
tations of  necessity.  To  get  any  skilled  work  done  in  those  first 
years  of  extreme  effort  and  hardship  must  have  been  well-nigh 
impossible.  The  house  is  a  good  one  and  was  a  remarkable 
triumph  of  love's  labor.  Rev.  Dr.  Wm.  G.  Andrews  has  written 
its  history  with  painstaking  detail,  in  another  labor  of  love  which 
needs  no  repeating  here. 

And  now  came  on  the  years  whose  hardships  tried  men's 
souls.  Before  1649  seven  of  the  leading  emigrants,  all  young 
men  but  one,  were  dead.  Then  began  the  removals  to  the  old 
country,  to  Boston,  to  New  Haven,  and  to  other  places.  By 
1660  twenty  out  of  the  original  twenty- five  signers  were  gone. 
Henry  Whitfield  was  the  first  to  return  to  England  in  1650. 
To  look  at  this  fact  in  any  tolerant  light  we  must  first  consider 
what  had  been  going  on  in  England.  Charles  I  was  executed 
in  1649.  There  were  two  wild  years  when  Cromwell  kept  Eng- 
land and  Scotland  under  the  harrow,  pursuing  the  fugitive 
prince,  creating  and  dissolving  parliaments,  sweeping  the  seas 
with  the  fleets,  and  making  hard  times  for  Papists  and  good 
times  for  Puritans.  The  English  Inquisition  was  over,  and 
men  dared  to  call  their  souls  their  own.  The  bugle  was  sounded 
for  recall,  and  those  who  trusted  the  great  Protector  were 
marching  back.  There  came  to  Whitfield,  who  had  never  been 
obnoxious  even  to  the  old  government,  urgent  invitations  to 
return.  He  had  expended  all  his  fortune  for  the  colony  and 
his  family.  His  health  was  failing.  The  people  were  called 
together  to  see  if  they  could  support  him.  They  were  unable 
to  squeeze  out  more  than  a  few  shillings  to  add  to  his  salary  of 
105  pounds.  The  most  they  could  say  was  that  they  "hoped 
they  could  continue  their  present  some."  Mr.  Whitfield  "judged 
that  the  people  did  so  much  as  they  were  able  and  dealt  respect- 
fully and  kindly  with  him,  but  yet  he  could  not  any  farther 
engage  himself  than  formerly."  And  so  the  end  came.  "At 
the  time  of  parting  the  whole  town  accompanied  him  to  the  water- 


48  HISTORICAL   PAPERS 

side,  with  a  spring-tide  of  tears  because  they  should  see  his  face 
no  more."  And  perhaps  some  of  the  tears  were  shed  because 
those  who  stayed  knew  they  should  see  old  England  no  more. 
On  his  way  to  Boston  he  was  driven  by  contrary  winds  to 
Martha's  (then  called  Martin's)  Vineyard,  and  there  became 
interested  in  the  work  of  Thomas  Mayhew  among  the  Indians, 
and  this  led  him  also  to  visit  John  Eliot  at  Roxbury.  And  it 
followed  that  on  his  return  to  England  he  wrote  two  little  appeals 
for  the  Indian  work  under  these  apostles,  books  with  fanciful 
titles  like  his  early  writings.  They  were :  "The  Light  appearing 
more  and  more  towards  the  Perfect  Day,  or,  a  Farther  Discovery 
of  the  Present  State  of  the  Indians  in  New  England,  concerning 
the  progresse  of  the  Gospel  amongst  them."  And 

"Strength  out  of  Weakness,  or,  a  Glorious  Manifestation  of 
the  further  progresse  of  the  Gospel  amongst  the  Indians  in  New 
England." 

In  this  latter  work  are  enthusiastic  expressions  concerning 
"the  Spirit  into  which  these  poore  Creatures  are  sweetly  bap- 
tized." 

This  Indian  episode  was  perhaps  but  the  natural  consequence 
of  wind  and  weather;  but  when  we  remember  the  sacred  charge 
which  he  was  leaving  at  Guilford;  when  we  recall  the  solemn 
covenant  never  to  forsake  each  other,  by  which  he,  as  well  as 
the  humblest,  had  bound  himself  eleven  years  before  on  their 
voyage  outward-bound;  when  we  think  of  the  example  set  by 
this  shepherd  of  the  flock  which  many  of  the  gentry  who  had 
means  for  their  return  were  not  slow  to  follow,  until  William 
Leete  and  William  Chittenden  were  the  only  ones  of  the  original 
leaders  who  remained;  when  we  contemplate  the  sad  and 
deserted  and  the  sometimes  bitter  feeling  of  those  who  were 
left  behind,  taken  with  the  fact  that  there  seems  to  be  no 
correspondence  extant  between  Whitfield  and  the  Guilford  people 
after  his  return, — then  it  seems  to  me  we  must  feel  the  futility 
of  his  taking  up  at  the  eleventh  hour  the  cause  of  the  American 
Indian.  It  was  a  cause  just  then  popular  with  certain  members 
of  Parliament,  to  whom  he  addressed  himself. 

Mr.  Whitfield  soon  found  himself  reinstated  in  the  English 
Church,  which,  in  a  true  sense,  had  never  ceased  to  be  his 
church,  and  took  charge  of  a  church  in  Winchester.  The  set- 
tled and  scholastic  air  of  that  historic  town  must  have  been 


THE  CHARACTER  OF   HENRY  WHITFIELD  49 

most  grateful  to  his  taste  after  the  crudeness  of  a  new  settle- 
ment. He  spent  about  six  years  there  and  died  in  1657.  His 
will  was  witnessed  in  Winchester  by  his  son  Nathaniel  and  his 
daughter  Mary,  who  seem  to  have  been  the  only  members  of  his 
family  near  him.  It  conveyed  all  his  estate  to  his  wife,  to  be 
by  her  divided  among  their  children.  She,  poor  woman,  was 
left  behind,  with  perhaps  some  of  the  younger  children,  when 
he  returned  to  England,  and  probably  never  saw  his  face  again. 
She  remained  in  Guilford  certainly  until  1659,  at  which  time 
he  had  been  two  years  dead,  and  is  said  by  a  happy  euphemism  to 
have  been  "managing  the  estate."  With  the  assistance  of  Gov. 
Leete  and  her  son-in-law,  the  Rev.  John  Higginson,  she  attempted 
to  sell  the  house  and  lands  for  a  grammar-school.  Failing  in 
this,  it  was  finally  sold  in  London  by  her  son  Nathaniel  to  a 
Major  Robert  Thompson,  in  whose  family  the  property  long 
remained,  occupied  by  tenants,  a  detriment  to  the  interests  of 
Guilford.  In  that  year,  1659,  ner  son-in-law,  Rev.  Mr.  Higgin- 
son, and  Sarah  Whitfield,  his  wife,  departed,  intending  to  go  to 
England,  but  being  driven  by  stress  of  weather  into  his  home 
port  of  Salem,  he  remained  there  forty-eight  years  until  he  died. 
In  all  probability  Mrs.  Whitfield  accompanied  them  when  they 
left  Guilford,  as  her  house  was  sold.  How  long  she  may  have 
lingered  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  we  do  not  know,  but  she 
died  in  Wapping,  in  the  County  of  Middlesex,  England,  in  1669, 
as  shown  by  a  power  of  attorney  from  her  son  Nathaniel  as 
executor  of  her  will.  The  Rev.  Thomas  Ruggles,  a  later  pastor 
of  Guilford,  gives  a  mournful  picture  of  the  condition  of  the 
people  for  about  twenty  years  after  Mr.  Higginson  departed. 
"In  this  headless  state  of  the  church,"  says  he,  "they  fell  into 
great  confusion  and  diversity  of  opinions.  Many  moved  to  Kil- 
lingworth,  others  elsewhere.  Some  returned  later."  From  such 
a  blow  it  is  doubtful  if  the  town  ever  recovered. 

Looking  back  over  the  life  of  this  interesting  man,  we  seem 
to  see  one  who  is  caught  between  two  cross-seas.  Early  life,  by 
training  and  circumstance,  fostered  the  refined  scholar,  the  gentle- 
man, perhaps  the  recluse.  Later  life  demanded  the  stern  qualities, 
the  energy  and  hardy  self-denials  of  the  pioneer.  Nature  made 
him  devout,  spiritual,  poetical,  full  of  delicate  fancies.  Guilford 
called  on  him  to  grapple  with  material  problems.  Education  and 


50  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

temperament  made  him  a  conservative.  The  times  called  for 
radical  principles  and  measures.  He  loved  England  and  her 
Church,  and  belonged  to  both  as  a  picture  belongs  in  its  frame. 
Some  coarser  men  were  more  effective  in  our  New  England 
history,  and  there  were  many,  too,  of  delicate  fibre  who  were 
faithful  unto  the  end, — who  having  put  the  hand  to  the  plow 
never  turned  back.  But  standing  thus  at  the  point  where  the 
judge  is  ready  to  give  sentence,  let  him  first  count  the  cost  of 
what  Whitfield  had  already  done  for  the  cause,  the  sacrifice  of 
home  and  all  that  had  sweetened  life,  the  generous  lavishing  of 
his  private  fortune  for  the  common  good,  the  kindly  hospitalities 
wherewith  he  sheltered  the  suspected  ones,  the  consolations  he 
had  given  to  those  discouraged,  and  the  piety  and  learning 
which  brought  him  reverential  love  from  his  followers.  And 
having  thus  taken  in  some  degree  the  measure  of  the  man,  the 
judge  will  say:  "Henry  Whitfield  was  so  good  a  man  that  he 
lacked  but  an  ounce  or  two  more  of  virile  courage  to  be  a  better." 

NOTE. 

The  pamphlet  in  which  the  foregoing  paper  first  appeared  was  sent  in 
1909  to  Rev.  Hereford  B.  George,  senior  fellow  of  New  College,  Oxford, 
Whitfield's  College,  of  which  he,  too,  was  for  a  short  time  a  fellow. 
Mr.  George  of  his  own  accord  very  kindly  made  search  for  additional 
information  and  sent  us  in  January,  1910,  the  result  of  his  search.  It 
is  a  real  sorrow  to  be  obliged  to  add  that  Mr.  George  died  in  December, 
1910.  He  was  a  student  of  history  and  published  several  works  in  his 
own  field.  The  last,  "Historical  Evidence"  (1909),  was  favorably 
reviewed  in  the  New  York  Nation,  in  which  attention  was  called  to 
the  fact,  illustrated  in  the  book  and  entitled  to  be  noticed  whatever 
one's  personal  opinions  may  be,  that  believers  in  Christianity  can  accept 
the  established  results  of  modern  study  and  thought  without  having 
their  faith  weakened. 

The  new  information  about  Whitfield  was  drawn  from  the  registers 
of  New  College  and  of  Winchester  College,  one  of  the  ancient  endowed 
public  schools  of  England.  Both  these  institutions  were  founded  late 
in  the  fourteenth  century  by  a  Bishop  of  Winchester,  William  of 
Wykeham,  and  are  closely  connected.  According  to  these  registers 
'  Henry  Whitfield  was  born  at  Greenwich,  in  the  county  of  Kent,  and 
not  at  Mortlake,  Surrey,  where  his  father  lived,  perhaps  because  his 
mother,  Mildred  Manning,  was  of  Greenwich.  His  birth  took  place  in 
the  summer  or  early  autumn  of  1592,  as  appears,  in  part,  from  the  fact 
that  he  was  elected  a  scholar  of  Winchester  College  at  the  age  of  ten, 
between  July  7  and  October  i,  1602.  The  elected  scholars  were  supported 


THE  CHARACTER  OF   HENRY  WHITFIELD  51 

by  the  foundation,  or  endowment,  while  there  were  others,  called  "com- 
moners,"' for  whom  payment  was  made.  Young  Whitfield  was  admitted 
to  Xew  College  June  8,  1610,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  and  must  have 
completed  his  eighteenth  year  after  the  date  just  mentioned.  The  rules 
of  Winchester  and  of  Xew  College,  Oxford,  strictly  forbade  a  boy's 
remaining  at  the  former  or  entering  the  latter  when  "over  eighteen,"  and 
the  rules  and  the  registers  unite  in  fixing  the  time  of  his  birth  (the  exact 
date  of  which  is  not  recorded  in  either  place)  in  1592,  and  between  June  8 
and  October  i. 

Whitfield  took  the  degree  of  B.D.  at  New  College,  and  held  a  fellow- 
ship (fifteen  were  assigned  to  Winchester  men)  until  1615.  "In  those 
days,"  Mr.  George  says,  "a  fellowship  was  vacated  either  by  marriage 
or  by  presentation  to  a  benefice,  or  by  succession  to  landed  property 
....  He  was  not  compelled  to  vacate  by  either  of  the  first  two 
reasons  ....  so  that  the  reasonable  inference  is  that  he  became  pos- 
sessed in  1615  of  property,  possibly  at  the  death  of  his  father."  Be 
this  as  it  may,  the  presumed  reason  for  the  relinquishment  of  the  fel- 
lowship is  in  accordance  with  what  we  otherwise  know  of  Whitfield's 
comparative  wealth.  Another  fact  of  very  great  interest  is  that  Mr. 
Whitfield,  dying  "at  Winchester  on  17  September,  1657  was  buried  in 
the  Cathedral."  The  honor  of  such  a  burial  for  the  builder  of  the  Whit- 
field House  (who  probably  had  a  benefice  in  Winchester  under  the 
Puritans),  constitutes  a  second  noteworthy  association  with  this  great 
English  church.  The  other  (later  in  date  though  earlier  known  to 
us)  belongs  to  the  monument  erected  to  a  Bishop  of  Winchester  who 
died  in  1/61,  Benjamin  Hoadly.  His  father  was  the  Rev.  Samuel  Hoadly, 
who  was  born  in  Guilford,  and  his  grandfather  was  John  Hoadly,  a 
fellow  settler  of  Whitfield's  and,  like  him,  one  of  the  seven  men  who 
formed  the  original  Guilford  church,  perhaps  organized  under  Whit- 
field's roof. 

w.  G.  A. 


INSCRIPTION 

THIS    HOUSE   BUILT 

A.    D.    1639 
WAS    THE    HOME 

OF 

REV   HENRY   WHITFIELD   B.C. 
FIRST    MINISTER 

AND 
THE    LEADER   OF    THE    FOUNDERS 

OF    GUILFORD 

IN    HONOR  OF  WHOM 

THIS  TABLET  IS  ERECTED  ON  THE 

OLDEST   STONE   HOUSE  IN   NEW  ENGLAND 

BY  THE  CONNECTICUT   SOCIETY 

OF  THE  COLONIAL  DAMES  OF   AMERICA 

1897 


TABLET    PLACED    ON    THE    WHITF1ELD    HOUSE    BY    THE    CONNECTICUT    SOCIETY 

OF    THE    COLONIAL    DAMES    OF    AMERICA,    OCTOBER    2O,    1897.       DOOR 

AND    WINDOW    BELONG    TO   THE    RECONSTRUCTION    OF    IQO4. 


TWO  MEDICAL  WORTHIES  GUILFORD  KNEW 
IN  FORMER  DAYS. 

By  Walter  R.  Steiner,  M.D.,  of  Hartford,  grandson  of  Hon.  Ralph  D. 

Smyth,  and   brother   of  Bernard,  C.   Steiner,  Ph.D.,   of 

Baltimore,  authors  of  two  histories  of  Guilford. 

The  two  histories  of  Guilford,  as  well  as  the  addresses  at 
the  Quarto-Millennial  Celebration,  and  Dr.  Andrews'  history  of 
Christ  Episcopal  Church,  pretty  thoroughly  exhaust  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  early  times  in  this  town.  There  were  two  men, 
however,  somewhat  associated  with  Guilford  and  this  old  Stone 
House,  whose  medical  careers  have  not  been  sufficiently  empha- 
sized. For  these  worthies  were  numbered  among  the  most 
eminent  physicians  of  their  day  in  New  England.  I  refer  to 
Bryan  Rossiter,  a  former  practitioner  here,  and  Governor  John 
Winthrop,  Jr.,  who  at  one  time  considered  buying  this  house 
we  dedicate  to-day  as  a  State  museum. 

The  former  came  to  this  country  with  his  father  in  1630, 
and  was  made  a  freeman,  a  year  later,  of  Dorchester,  Mass.  In 
1639  he  moved  to  Windsor,  Conn.,  became  town  clerk  there 
and  was  admitted  to  practise  medicine  in  the  State  of  Connec- 
ticut by  the  General  Court,  "being  first  tried  and  approved  by 
Mr.  Hooker,  Mr.  Stone  and  old  Air.  Smith  of  Wethersfield, 
in  the  face  of  the  said  Court."  He  migrated  to  Guilford  in 
1651,  purchasing  Samuel  Desborow's  estate  on  Water  street, 
and  became  greatly  interested  in  the  political  affairs  of  the  day, 
at  the  time  when  the  union  of  the  New  Haven  Colony  with 
Connecticut  was  being  considered.  He  came  into  a  very  large 
practice,  as  the  following  extract  shows,  which  was  taken  from 
a  letter  he  wrote  to  his  daughter  and  her  husband  on  September 
24,  1669:  "We  have  had  a  sore  visitation  again  by  sickness  and 
mortality  here  in  Guilford  this  summer,  as  the  last.  Our  graves 
are  multiplied  and  fresh  earth  heaps  are  increased.  Coffins 
again  and  again  have  been  carried  out  of  my  doors.  I  have 
taken  up  a  lot  amongst  the  tombs  in  the  midst  of  them."  It 
was  during  this  "visitation"  he  lost  his  wife,  his  daughter  and 


54  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

a  grandchild.  I  shall  elsewhere  refer  to  his  treating  Mrs. 
John  Higginson,  a  daughter  of  Henry  Whitfield. 

Rossiter  was  frequently  called  to  see  cases  in  all  parts  of  the 
State,  and  some  of  his  trips  to  Hartford  have  been  recorded. 
In  1659  tne  court  ordered  that  "Mr.  Bray  Rosseter  for  and 
in  consideration  of  his  paines,  in  comeing  to  and  attending  Mr. 
Talcot  in  his  sickness,  is  allowed  five  pounds,  to  be  paid  out 
of  ye  pub.  Treasury."  In  July,  1663,  he  probably  performed 
the  autopsy  on  Rev.  Samuel  Stone,  who  was  assistant  pastor  of 
the  First  Church  of  Christ  in  Hartford.  Mather  in  his  Mag- 
nalia  thus  refers  to  it :  "As  for  Mr.  Stone  if  it  were  metaphori- 
cally true  (what  they  proverbially  said)  of  Beza  that  he  had 
no  gall,  the  physicians  that  opened  him  after  his  death  found 
it  literally  true  of  this  worthy  man."  Rossiter  had  previously 
prescribed  for  Stone  and  had  been  paid  ten  pounds  for  it  by  the 
town  of  Hartford,  and  we  also  know  that  Davenport  of  New 
Haven  had  endeavored  to  make  Stone  take  Winthrop's  "sov- 
ereigne  remedy,"  Rubila,  "but  did  not  find  him  inclinable,  though 
he  was  burthened  in  his  stomach." 

But  more  interesting  than  this  is  the  autopsy  Rossiter  per- 
formed in  Hartford,  a  year  earlier,  to  ascertain  whether  the 
child  of  John  Kelly  was  bewitched.  The  child  was  a  girl,  aged 
eight  years,  "who  was  taken  in  the  night  following  Sunday, 
March  23d,  with  a  violent  attack  of  something  like  broncho- 
pneumonia.  In  her  delirium  she  cried  out  against  Goody  Ayres 
as  choking  and  afflicting  her,  and  the  last  words  the  child  spoke 
were  to  that  effect."  Following  the  superstition  of  those  times, 
both  her  parents  and  the  townspeople  thought  that  her  death 
was  due  to  some  preternatural  cause.  The  town,  accordingly, 
summoned  a  jury  of  six  men  to  inquire  of  the  cause  and  manner 
of  her  death.  Their  findings  were  so  supicious  that  on  the 
same  day,  that  is  five  days  after  the  child's  death,  Dr.  Rossiter 
performed  an  autopsy  at  the  grave,  and  mistook  his  findings  (now 
easily  explainable)  for  something  supernatural.  His  results  are 
embodied  in  a  still-existing,  clearly  described  protocol. 

Fortified  then  by  the  autopsy,  John  Kelly  and  Bethia,  his  wife, 
testify  in  open  court  on  May  13,  1662,  as  to  the  alleged  persecu- 
tions of  their  child  by  Goody  Ayres,  according  to  the  child's 
testimony.  They  state  that  the  child  after  eating  some  hot  soup 


TWO  MEDICAL  WORTHIES  GUILFORD  KNEW  55 

with  the  wife  of  William  Ayres,  against  their  wishes,  complained 
of  pain  in  her  stomach.  Her  father  gave  her  some  angelica  root, 
which  yielded  her  "present  ease,"  but  the  relief  was  only  tem- 
porary, as  sometime  later  she  died.  Fearing,  consequently,  an 
indictment,  Goody  Ayres  fled  suddenly  with  her  husband,  leaving 
their  son,  aged  eight,  behind  them,  as  well  as  all  their  possessions. 
\Ye  know  nothing  of  their  subsequent  history,  but  we  learn  that 
the  court  allowed  Mr.  Rossiter  on  March  n,  1662,  "twenty 
pounds  in  reference  to  openinge  Kellies  child  and  his  paynes  to 
visit  the  Dep-Governor  and  his  paynes  in  visiting  and  administer- 
ing to  Mr.  Talcot." 

Rossiter  finally  moved  to  Killingworth  (now  Clinton),  but 
soon  returned  here  and  died  in  1672.  There  is  one  of  the  books 
of  his  library  to  be  seen  in  the  Trinity  College  library  at  Hartford. 

John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  followed  his  father  to  this  country  in 
1631,  and  was  shortly  thereafter  made  an  assistant  in  the  Mas- 
sachusetts Colony.  A  year  later  he  led  a  company  of  twelve  to 
Agawam  (now  Ipswich),  where  a  settlement  was  made.  In 
about  a  year  he  returned  to  England  and  received  a  commission 
to  be  Governor  of  the  River  Connecticut  for  one  year.  On 
coming  back  to  America  he  built  a  fort  at  Saybrook,  and  resided 
there  part  of  that  time.  Then,  making  no  effort  to  have  the 
commission  renewed,  he  returned  to  Ipswich,  but  settled  again 
in  this  State  in  the  spring  of  1647,  at  Pequot  (now  New  Lon- 
don). Eight  years  later  he  moved  to  New  Haven.  It  was 
somewhat  prior  to  this  that  John  Higginson  wrote  to  Win- 
throp,  stating  that  the  bearer  of  the  letter  told  him  Winthrop 
"desired  to  know  whether  my  father  Whitfield's  house  and  lots 
was  yet  to  be  sould,  I  thought  fitt  to  give  you  notice  of  it," 
Higginson  declares,  "(knowing  that  if  God  make  your  way 
plaine  to  come  hither,  it  will  be  very  acceptable  to  all)  that  it  is 
yet  in  a  capacity  to  be  sold,  &  yet  through  his  neglect  of  speak- 
ing sooner,  the  opportunity  is  allmost  past,  for  the  second  day 
come  senight  my  broth.  Nath :  &  cousin  Jordan  are  to  take 
their  journey  for  England."  They  wish  consequently  to  dispose 
of  "their  occasions"  and  the  house  especially.  If  Winthrop 
''desired  to  buy  it,  it  will  be  necessary,"  Higginson  says,  "to  come 
over  the  beginning  of  next  week,  for  I  have  prevayled  with 
my  brother  Nathaniel  to  abstaine  from  any  way  of  disposing  of 


56  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

it  till  Thursday,  the  next  week."  It  is  unfortunate  that  this  man 
of  science,  by  not  purchasing  the  house,  was  lost  to  Guilford. 

From  New  Haven  Winthrop  was  called  to  dwell  in  Hartford 
on  being  elected  Governor  of  Connecticut  in  1657.  He  served 
as  Governor  one  year,  then  became  Deputy  Governor  on  account 
of  a  law  which  prevented  his  re-election.  The  law  being  repealed 
the  next  year,  he  served  continuously  as  Governor  from  1659 
until  his  death  in  1676. 

From  his  youth  up  he  was  devoted  to  scientific  studies  and 
was  an  omnivorous  reader  of  books.  His  library  was  one  of  the 
most  extensive  in  this  country,  and  many  of  his  books  may  yet 
be  seen  in  the  libraries  of  the  New  York  Society  and  Yale  Uni- 
versity. Alchemy  greatly  interested  him  and  among  his  corre- 
spondents were  numbered  Dr.  Robert  Child,  Sir  Kenelm  Digby, 
George  Storkey  and  Jonathan  Brewster,  all  of  whom  had  like 
ties.  He  was  also  much  attached  to  astronomy  and  with  his 
telescope,  which  was  "but  a  tube  of  3  foote  &  a  half  with  a 
concave  ey-glasse,"  he  was  able  to  see  five  satellites  of  Jupiter 
and  make  other  celestial  observations.  He  seemed  to  enjoy 
especially  the  association  with  scientific  men.  In  1661,  when  he 
went  to  England  for  a  third  time,  he  arrived  not  long  after  the 
Royal  Society  for  Improving  Useful  Knowledge  was  organized. 
On  December  11  of  that  year  he  was  proposed  for  membership 
by  William  Brereton,  afterwards  Lord  Brereton,  and  was 
admitted  January  i,  1662.  During  this  stay  in  England,  he  took 
an  active  part  in  the  society's  proceedings,  read  a  number  of 
papers  on  a  great  variety  of  subjects  and  exhibited  many  curious 
things. 

He  came  naturally  by  his  liking  for  medicine,  as  his  father 
had  no  mean  knowledge  of  this  science.  We  learn,  also,  that 
his  brother  Henry's  widow  "was  much  employed  in  her  sur- 
gurye  and  hath  very  good  successe,"  and  his  son  Wait  and 
grandson  John  had  both  a  laudable  knowledge  of  medicine  for 
their  times.  His  patients  came  mostly  from  Connecticut,  Mas- 
sachusetts and  Rhode  Island.  They  were  frequently  sent  to 
him,  generally  at  Pequot  or  Hartford,  but  at  times  he  would 
come  to  see  them  in  consultation  with  the  village  doctor,  or 
otherwise,  when  they  were  too  sick  to  be  moved.  Some  were 
also  treated  by  him  by  letter  without  personal  inspection.  Cotton 


TWO  MEDICAL  WORTHIES  GUILFORD  KNEW  57 

Mather  says:  "Wherever  he  came  still  the  Diseased  flocked 
about  him,  as  if  the  Healing  Angel  of  Bethesada  had  appeared 
in  the  place." 

\Ye  know  that  in  Guilford  the  families  of  Governor  William 
Leete,  John  Higginson  and,  probably,  John  "Megs"  were  all 
under  his  care.  In  1654  or  '55  Higginson  writes  a  most  earnest 
letter  to  Winthrop  at  Pequot  or  Hartford,  begging  him  to  come 
and  see  his  wife.  Higginson  does  not  state  what  her  sickness 
was,  but  declares  "the  case  is  such  as  cannot  be  judged  without 
ocular  inspection."  He  calls  it  "a  very  sad  affliction,  she  being 
in  a  very  dangerous  case  as  Mr.  Rosseter  (above  mentioned) 
and  all  our  neighbours  here  doe  apprehend."  He  hopes  that 
Winthrop's  "counsell  &  help,  together  with  Mr.  Rosseter"  may 
be  the  means  of  preserving  her  life,  "if  so  it  pleas  the  Lord." 

Governor  Leete,  also,  placed  great  confidence  in  Winthrop's 
ability  and  skill.  At  one  time  he  writes:  "My  wife  entreats 
some  more  of  your  phisick,  although  she  feareth  it  to  have  very 
contrary  operations  on  Mr.  Rossiters  stomach" — showing  that 
professional  jealousy  existed  in  those  days.  Leete's  children 
were  the  cause  of  much  anxiety.  In  1658  Leete  writes  about 
the  eye  trouble  of  their  youngest  child,  Peregrine,  and  later 
of  his  "starting,  &  sometimes  almost  strangling  ffitts,  like  con- 
vulsions, which  have  more  frequently  afflicted  the  infant  of 
late  than  formerly."  We  are  apt  to  conceive  it  probable,  he 
says,  to  proceed  from  more  than  ordinary  painful  breeding  teeth. 
His  eyes  seemed  to  be  better  from  the  use  of  a  "glasse  of  eye 
watter,"  which  was  also  used  on  other  of  the  children  so  that 
"a  little  further  recruit"  of  the  same  was  desired. 

Peregrine  did  not,  however,  monopolize  all  the  family  troubles, 
for  his  sister,  Graciana,  was  a  weakly,  puny  thing  and  gathered 
strength  but  very  little.  Winthrop's  treatment  seems  to  have 
caused  an  improvement,  for  shortly  thereafter  she  began  "to 
slide  a  chaire  before  her  &  walke  after  it,  after  her  ffeeble 
manner."  She  caused  trouble,  however,  in  the  taking  of  her 
medicine  and  Leete  asks  for  directions  "to  make  her  willing  & 
apt  to  take  it ;  for  though  it  seemes  very  pleasant  of  itself e,  yet 
is  she  grown  marvailous  awkward  and  averse  from  takeing  it  in 
beer.  Wherefore  I  would  entreat  you  to  prescribe  to  us  the 
varyety  of  wayes  in  which  it  may  be  given  soe  effectually;  wee 


5 8  HISTORICAL    PAPERS 

doubt  els  it  may  doe  much  lesse  good,  being  given  by  force  onely." 
Andrew's  "starting  fits"  as  well  as  a  distemper  affecting  his  son 
William's  wife  demand  other  letters  to  Winthrop.  Leete,  also, 
writes  about  a  weak  back,  which  afflicted  a  neighbor's  child. 

"Mrs.  John  Megs"  was  also  a  probable  patient.  In  1673  Joseph 
Eliot,  Higginson's  successor  at  Guilford,  writes  John  Meigs  a 
letter  of  introduction  to  Winthrop.  In  it  he  asks  aid  for  Meigs' 
wife,  who  has  "a  gentle  beginning  of  fits  of  flatus  hypocondriacus 
yt  stir  upon  griefe  yet  without  violence  for  the  present." 

We  do  not  know  what  remedies  Rossiter  prescribed,  but  some 
in  Winthrop's  pharmacopoeia  were  most  gruesome.  One  remedy 
highly  prized  was  "my  black  powder  against  the  plague,  small 
pox,  purples,  all  sorts  of  feavers ;  Poyson ;  either,  by  Way  of 
Prevention  or  after  Infection."  It  was  made  "by  putting  live 
toads  into  an  earthen  pot  so  as  to  half  fill  it  and  baking  and 
burning  them  'in  the  open  ayre  and  not  in  an  house'  until  they 
could  be  reduced  by  pounding  first  to  a  brown,  and  then  into  a 
black  powder."  We  indeed  hope  that  Winthrop  was  not  so 
foolish  as  to  employ  the  following  remedy  for  malaria.  It  was 
sent  him  by  the  distinguished  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  of  England,  who 
claims  to  have  had  "infallible  successe"  with  it:  "Pare  the 
patients  nayles  when  the  fit  is  coming  on;  and  put  the  parings 
into  a  litle  bagge  of  fine  linon  or  sarsenet ;  and  tye  that  about  a 
live  eeles  neck  in  a  tubbe  of  water.  The  eele  will  dye,  and  the 
patient  will  recover.  And  if  a  dog  or  hog  eate  that  eele,  they 
will  also  dye." 

Let  us  cherish,  then,  the  memory  of  these  two  men  who  as 
general  practitioners  and  consultants  employed  the  healing  art 
and  labored  long  and  well  for  suffering  humanity.* 

*  We  are  indebted  to  the  late  Dr.  C.  J.  Hoadly  of  Hartford  for  having 
unearthed  the  account  of  Rossiter's  autopsy  on  "Kellies  child."  In  the 
preparation  of  this  paper  I  have  drawn  largely  from  two  former  articles 
of  mine  entitled :  Some  Early  Autopsies  in  The  United  States,  and 
Governor  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  of  Connecticut,  as  a  Physician.  They 
appeared  in  The  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital  Bulletin  during  the  year  1903. 


TRUSTEES  59 


ORIGINAL  TRUSTEES. 
JULY,  1900. 

(Eight    appointed    by    Governor    Lounsbury;     the    first    selectman    of 
Guilford  a  trustee  ex-officio.) 

Rev.  William  G.  Andrews,  D.D.,  Guilford,  President. 

Rev.  George  W.  Banks,  Guilford. 

Mrs.  Godfrey  Dunscombe,  New  Haven. 

Hon.  Lynde  Harrison,  New  Haven. 

James  J.  Merwin,  Windsor. 

Frederick  C.  Norton,  Bristol. 
Rev.    Frederick  E.  Snow,  Guilford,  Secretary. 

Joel  T.  Wildman,  Guilford,  Treasurer. 

Richard  C.  Woodruff,  Guilford,  ex-officio. 


PRESENT  TRUSTEES. 
MAY,  1911. 

Frederick  C.  Norton,  Bristol,  President. 

Rev.  William  G.  Andrews,  Guilford. 

Mrs.  Frank  W.  Cheney,  South  Manchester. 

Harry  B.  Dudley,  Guilford,  ex-officio. 

Mrs.  Godfrey  Dunscombe,  New  Haven. 

Edward  C.  Seward,  New  York  and  Guilford,  Sec.  and  Treas. 

George  Dudley  Seymour,  New  Haven. 

Rev.  Frederick  E.  Snow,  Guilford. 

Hon.  Rollin  S.  Woodruff,  New  Haven  and  Guilford. 


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